People won’t believe what they can’t imagine . . . In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz—one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Against all odds, he and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers and narrowly...

Dita Kraus grew up in Prague in an intellectual, middle-class Jewish family. She went to school, played with her friends, and never thought of herself as being different--until the advent of the Holocaust. Torn from her home, Dita was sent to Auschwitz with her family. From her time in the children's block of Auschwitz to her liberation from the camps and on into her adulthood, Dita's powerful memoir sheds light on an incredible life--one that is...

Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed on 9 November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on the Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays...

In March 1942, at the age of 25, kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger was deported from her hometown in Slovakia along with 998 other young women. They were some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Very few would survive the next three years until liberation. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in day-to-day charge of the accommodation blocks and even the camps at large-so called Blockalteste and Lageralteste...