Witness to the truth - the story of the man who did the unbelievable during and after the war. New York 1974 - ...

Witness to the truth - the story of the man who did the unbelievable during and after the war. New York 1974 - Dedicated and signed copy by the author

Witness to the truth by Nathan Shapell, published by David McKay Company, New York 1974 - dedicated and signed copy by the author. The story of the man who did the unbelievable during and after the war.

Nathan Shapell was seventeen when the Germans occupied his birthplace in Poland. In an instant the normal life vanished and forced the youth to begin a struggle for survival. After managing to outwit the Nazis in innumerable instances along with his Jewish brothers in the ghettos, he was finally caught and transported to Auschwitz, and since the summer of 1943 he endured the hell of the camp. Nathan survived Auschwitz, death marches and two more concentration camps. At twenty-three his home was destroyed and most of his family dead, without a country or an identity, he led a small group, including his only surviving sister, out from the Russian-occupied zone of Germany. In utter desperation and bewilderment that prevailed after the war, they found themselves begging from town to town unable to find food or shelter. They were considered "displaced persons" whom the German civilian population turned away at the door; the American army swamped with innumerable problems of order at war's end had no clue what to do with them. And then, in a small town in Bavaria, Nathan Shapell finally found an American officer who was willing to listen, to give them shelter and rest. But as soon as they reached rest at last, Shapell was subjected to endless worries about the thousands of "displaced" still wandering around Europe, some of whom are still living in concentration camps because there was nowhere else to go. Within the next five and one-half years he built a community of thousands of displaced persons and camp survivors, people from many countries, Shapell helped the people to build lives from nothing in several extensive areas. All this under a bewildered American military government coping with unprecedented human misery. Shapell built the bridges needed for the desperate refugees to rehabilitate their lives. Among other things, he established a school, an orphanage for Jewish children and many other frameworks.

The book tells his heroic story, and is also a tribute to those ordinary American soldiers and officers who found themselves in a role for which they were not prepared. It testifies to their humanity and decency; it also testifies for the survivors and for the silent dead. Finally, Shapell calls out to all humanity, especially to young Americans, to show them that a human being can go through the worst hell imaginable, survive it, and help others who have gone through a similar inferno. The assistance work was completed, Shapell and his wife immigrated to the United States, and here they wrote the third and final chapter in his untold story - a man who lost his entire family established a company that built homes for thousands of American families.

10 [386] pages. 22 cm. Hardcover with the original dust jacket. All complete.