I Kept My Promise

An eye witness account of a remarkable struggle for survival by a young polish Jew, during and shortly after the Holocaust. In the prime of life, on April 15th, 1942 -his twentieth birthday- Jacob Birnbaum was torn away from his family and put on one of the last trains sent to a labor camp from his hometown. In this biography, Jacob takes the reader with him, as he relives the incredible chain of events he encountered during his three years of captivity at six different labor camps and his subsequent struggle to regain a normal life amidst the post-war turmoil in Europe. Birnbaum's testimony represents the epitome of the phrase, "Truth is stranger than fiction." 
Even though his epic began in 1942, Jacob's photographic memory has made it possible for him to recount his experiences as if they occurred only yesterday. As painful as it was to retrace his steps, the release of this narrative is helping fulfill a promise he made to his parents when they wrote: "Son, you may be the only survivor of our family. Never let the world forget what they did to us." He was the only survivor. And he will never let us forget.