By My Own Authority

Marian Pretzel was a carefree seventeen-year-old Jewish art student at the start of the Second World War.  During Nazi occupation of his hometown Lvov, his parents disappeared; Marian was rounded up but miraculously escaped from the infamous Janowska concentration camp.


Using his talents as an artist, he successfully outwitted the Nazis by forging official German documents for food, money and travel throughout occupied Europe on German troop trains. Told with great humour, this story of high-spirited ingenuity and determination is in turn tragic, inspiring and full of suspense.


Simon Wiesenthal, who ran the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna and was known universally as a relentless pursuer of Nazi war criminals, has written a moving introduction to this edition.