Survivor
One man's incredible true story of surviving Auschwitz, escaping the Death March and fighting for his freedom
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4.8 • 15 Ratings
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
An extraordinary true story of survival against all odds - and a fascinating eyewitness account of one of the darkest periods in human history.
'A huge 5 stars for a story that had to be told. There is simply far too much to say to do Sam, his book, or the nightmare of the war justice.' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'This should be read and re-read for generations, just like The Diary of Anne Frank' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'A man with dignity. A book that is raw and unflinching. A staggering account of Nazi obsession with the obliteration of a people. It left me profoundly sad and angry for what happened, and grateful that because of survivors such as Sam Pivnik, this episode in history can and will not be forgotten.' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
In September 1939, Hitler's Germany invaded Poland. It was Sam Pivnik's thirteenth birthday, and his life was turned upside down overnight. He was first transported to a ghetto in his home town of Bedzin, then another. He then spent a harrowing six months on Auschwitz's notorious Rampkommando, before being sent to work at the brutal Furstengrube mining camp. As the Third Reich collapsed, he took part in the 'Death March' that took him west - only to board the prison ship Cap Arcona which was mistakenly sunk by the Royal Air Force in 1945, as they believed SS members to be on board.
Each of these experiences could have proved fatal. Many brought Sam on the verge of death. But he survived, against all odds, and built a life from himself after the War.
In Survivor he tells his incredible story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An 86-year-old Jewish survivor of ghettos, concentration camps, and the infamous January 1945 Death March, Pivnik graphically describes the casual and systematic brutality he witnessed as a forced guard at Auschwitz on the ramp where incoming prisoners were processed, he routinely watched as Josef Mengele ("the Angel of Death"), with "casual flicks of his doeskin gloves," decided whether prisoners were destined for slave labor or death. Pivnik's grim will to survive impelled him to make numerous moral concessions, but he makes no excuses for his actions: "I became... a human vulture." When a bracelet he's stolen is found by a guard, he refuses to fess up, despite the possibility that someone else might take the fall for it: "This was Auschwitz-Birkenau; the rules were different. And you never put your hand up for anything." Shuttled to and fro as "the Reich to death," Pivnik was aboard the doomed Cap Arcona, a ship full of prisoners, when it was sunk in the Bay of L beck by the British Royal Air Force just days before Germany's surrender. Amazingly, he swam to shore and lived. The horrors recounted here will be familiar to most readers of Holocaust memoirs, but they are no less shocking for that. 8-page b&w photo insert.
