Description

On April 27, 1944, Polish-born Israel Cappell was awakened by the dreadful knock on the door that he and his family had feared since they began to hide from the Nazis in their adopted city of Brussels two years earlier. Israel's sister Fanny managed to flee, one of many consequential miracles that shape this riveting memoir of Holocaust survival.

Israel takes the reader on a futile journey of attempted escape after the Nazis' occupation of Belgium. He narrates the daily challenges of hiding and describes his ultimate incarceration in SS-Sammellager Kazerne Dossin, the Nazis' transit camp in Belgium. Israel also details the remarkable story of his family's rescue from deportation to Auschwitz via the Palestine Exchange Lists - a little-known arrangement involving the Nazis, the Red Cross, and the Jewish Agency.

Israel's memoir is among the rare, English-language testimonies of Holocaust survival in Belgium. It is also an extraordinary story of human endurance and survival.