Defy the Darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele / Edition 1

by Joe Rosenblum, David Kohn

Overview

This is the story of a young man caught in the whirlwind of the Holocaust, who survives a chain of events so harrowing they almost defy belief. As a boy, Joe Rosenblum watches as the Nazi overlords tighten their grip on his small Polish town. Narrowly escaping mass executions that take his own brother, Rosenblum is first sheltered by a local Gentile family, then takes refuge with Russian partisans. Once captured by the Germans, he begins a journey through three concentration camps—Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Dachau.

Living by his wits, a courier for the camp underground, Rosenblum is able to help other prisoners, and even to save children selected for the gas chambers. Eventually he finds himself working for the infamous Dr. Mengele. In a bizarre twist of fate, the Angel of Death is persuaded to perform life-saving surgery on Rosenblum—perhaps making him the only Jew to be saved by the deadly doctor's skills.

A remarkable man who danced on the razor's edge of history, Rosenblum did not merely survive the Holocaust, but rose above it by radiating hope and humanity—by defying the darkness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275968625
Publisher:	ABC-CLIO, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/28/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

JOE ROSENBLUM was born in Miedzyrzec, Poland, a town slowly strangled to death by the Nazis./e Though Joe lost most of his family in the Holocaust, he saved numerous other people as well as himself through almost unflagging optimism, luck and ingenuity. He endured three death camps and a death march. After being liberated, Joe worked in Germany for a couple of years before immigrating to the United States, where he has flourished in the building and painting business. Joe remains in contact with several of the people mentioned in this book and continues to run several family businesses.

DAVID KOHN is a freelance writer who has been in the writing business for 25 years./e He has worked in various capacities on several books. As a versatile co-author, ghostwriter, and editor, David has worked on book topics ranging from medicine to magic to memoirs.

Table of Contents

The Shadows Spread

Mother's Trees Stand Naked

Signs of Danger

The Christian Disguise

Revenge Denied

The Noose Tightens

Very Bad News

Compassion Rewarded

Captured

Fall of the Jewish Police

Scrambling for Life in the Camps

Snatched and Shipped

Construction for Destruction

Hoodwinking the Death Merchants

The Fifty Dollar Break

Tiptoeing On a Razor Blade: The Underground and Mengele

Healing by Butter Knife

A Happy Delivery Man

Mengele Saves a Life

Death and a Job Switch

On the Ramp

Daring and Death

Hangman

Trapped in Concrete

Sabotage and Glue

Death on the March

Freedom for What?

Editorial Reviews

In broad outlines, Rosenblum's story is a familiar one to readers of Holocaust memoirs: he went from a Polish ghetto to a concentration camp and on to liberation--the only one of his immediate family to survive. Although Rosenblum, a retired businessman, gives exacting detail on his experiences, his memoir suffers from all the problems of this genre. Since his narrative is based on memory, his reconstructed dialog appears overly formal and thus not believable. The lack of supporting documentation does not necessarily detract from Rosenblum's credibility, but his central claim that his life was saved by "The Angel of Death"--Dr. Josef Mengele himself--might strain some readers' credulity. (Although other physicians were credited with saving some lives, not even Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors recounts such an incident regarding Mengele.) Rosenblum intersperses his personal experiences with references to wider events, such as the impending invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and it is sometimes difficult to determine when he is speaking from firsthand knowledge and when he is merely trying to give historical context. Recommended for Judaica libraries.--Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A Polish Jewish survivor of three death camps (Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Dachau) offers a direct and straightforward account of his pre-war life, the loss of nearly his entire family, and shelter with a local Gentile family and then with Russian partisans prior to internment. Involved in the camp underground, he finds himself working for the infamous Dr. Mengele until his eventual release by American soldiers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews