The Survivor

WINNER OF THE CANADIAN JEWISH LITERARY AWARD FOR HOLOCAUST LITERATURE

An amazing, untold story of the Holocaust, of survivor turned Nazi hunter

In the tradition of The Boy in the Woods and By Chance Alone, The Survivor is an unbelievable yet true story of one man’s endurance and his determination to not only survive the Holocaust but to bring to justice those who perpetrated great crimes against humanity.

This is one of the last great untold stories of the Holocaust. Josef Lewkowicz was the only one left alive in his extended family of 150. The survivor of six concentration camps, he became a Nazi hunter, responsible for bringing to justice his greatest tormentor, the Butcher of Plaszow, as well as the murderous SS camp Kommandant Amon Goeth. Working as part of a covert operation, he also helped to rescue hundreds of orphaned children who had been hidden by doomed parents during the ghetto clearances in Poland. Many of these children were able to begin new lives in Israel.

Lewkowicz operated as a diamond dealer in South America, befriended leading Israeli politicians like Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and met Argentine dictator Juan Peron. He raised his family in Montreal. He is now ninety-six years old and lives in Jerusalem. This book, his testimony, captures the spirit, the soul, the neshama of the survivor.