Of Mad Dogs, Shepherds, and Sheep

It was March 19, 1944 and Miklos was in Budapest studying for entrance exams to university when the Nazis invaded his homeland. The son of a well-to-do Jewish Merchant, he would be caught up in events that would challenge his faith in man and God, and shatter the world in which he'd been raised.


In this autobiographical account, written in the early 1960’s, the author transports us back to his formative years in a rural town in northeastern Hungary and the forbidden love of a Christian girl, into Hitler’s slave mines where he would struggle to survive, and the escape and journey back to his home in hopes of rebuilding the life he so cherished.


Originally written to keep a silent promise to a fellow prisoner, Miklos' manuscript was never published during his lifetime. And it became his eldest son’s mission to fulfill that vow and share one man’s remarkable story of self-discovery during one of the darkest times in recorded history.


Mordecai M. Hauer was born in Hungary in 1926. Imprisoned by the Germans in 1944, he spent a year in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Jawischowitz, Buchenwald, and Berga. After WWII he was employed by UNRRA in two Displaced Person camps in Germany and married while there. Emigrating to Israel in 1948 with his wife, he worked in a collective farm settlement until seriously injured by a land mine. 


Coming to the United States for corrective spinal surgery, and thereafter unable to return to farming, he resumed his education, obtaining a B.A. degrees in Political Science from Brooklyn College with Honors and an M.A. degree in Political Science from The New School for Social Research. He served as Assistant to the United Nations Delegation of Israel from 1954-1957, taught Western Civilization & Philosophy at Queens College from 1963-1968, and was a teacher and principal of two religious schools in New York until his retirement. 


Featured in the PBS documentary Berga, produced by Charles Guggenheim, many of his personal experiences were also incorporated into the book Soldiers and Slaves by Roger Cohen, an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times.