killed in three days. 600,000 is 1,643 a day or 160 people per hour every hour for one year. What kind of person or group of people could kill women, children, young and old, who never lifted a single weapon, some while holding babies in their arms? What kind of culture could be so poisonous as to feed that kind of behavior? The Nazi Holocaust was a crime of the highest order against humanity. It was based on racial anti-semitic hatred fomented within a Democratic nation. The only crime the Jews committed was success. They lit candles on Friday nights, they read and prayed fervently, the lived side-by-side with their neighbors, they traded and earned meager livings. And they were frequently victimized, but, because they were always a minority, they had little options available to them, fearing expulsion with nowhere to go. What resonated with me as I wrote this story and pondered the depravity Leon went through, was could I survive if I was in his shoes? That is one reason I wrote the book in the first person. I want you, the reader to put on his mask, and see how you might handle it. Resoundingly, I don’t think I could survive. I can hardly stand the cold weather when I’m fully dressed. Leon wore wooden shoes with no socks during Winter, combined with very little food in an environment ripe with disease. The only thing he had a lot of was hard labor, constant grueling hard labor, the kind that would build muscles if you had food, or tear them down if you didn’t. He was about 6 feet tall and weighed 80 pounds when he was liberated. I can’t imagine standing in front of a Nazi officer. Now, try being naked, in the freez- ing cold after standing for 3 days in a cattle car so overloaded with people there is no room to sit and hardly room to breathe, some of whom die below your feet, slipping on urine and feces, with no water and no hope. Then arriving at Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in the night, getting out and going through a selection process designed to destroy most of the people who arrived. What would you do? I can’t imagine having the nerve or the bravado to survive, but Leon puffed up his chest, shook off the dizziness and looked at a group of Nazi medical officers in the eye while declaring, “I am a horse adjutant.” They laughed because a Jewish boy could not be the adjutant or assistant of a commandant, but they realized he was feisty, full of life and strength and this small act of character saved his life only to be tested again and again. Leon’s father told him to tell the world the story about what happened to them. It is not a story. It is a dire warning. It can happen again. This book hopes to make you aware of the slippery slope of Fascism and hate. Once you learn what happened, he
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