One Bridge to Life

In the years since the brutality of Nazi-occupied Poland, William Samelson, a survivor, has made peace with his past. His riveting autobiographical novel is an emphatic celebration of life. The year is 1939. The boy is ten years old---Wilek Samelson. As the Nazis tighten their grip on Poland, young Wilek's beloved home and way of life begin to unravel. Through the next harrowing years of war, labor camps, and incalculable personal loss, the boy quickly becomes a man. Wilek manages to escape the Nazis, courageously participating in the partisan underground activity. Relentlessly hunted down and recaptured by the SS, he survives the final years of war in the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, until liberation in 1945.

From this suspenseful and emotion-charged portrait of a world gone mad emerges Samelson's unique perspective on the unspeakable. In place of unseeing bitterness and hatred, Samelson affirms the difference between the Nazis who persecuted his family and people, and those Germans who were caught between the mission of Hitler and their own humanity. Electrifying instances of heroism and cruelty abound. We instinctively know this story is not only true, but true to human nature.