Ewa Bacon

To my dear readers:

ALERT: JANUARY 2018 this book is being reissued at a LOWER price as a HARDBACK with additional illustrations.

Why write this book? It's as if I am on preordained trajectory! In 2002 I received the gift of a life-time: an oral history my father had submitted in the 1970s to the museum in Oswiecim, the Polish city the Nazis once called Auschwitz. The oral history was in Polish. That's a language I can read and translate. The story of saving lives in Auschwitz has many historical dimensions. And I am a historian! I have been well taught (I carry graduate degree in history from the University of Chicago) and I have been teaching well (over twenty years at Lewis University in Illinois.) First I wanted my children to read the translation, but then I realized that there were a lot of explanations needed. So I have written a story that tells all the background information and the biographical information of many participants in this tale. I am now a retired historian, a professor emerita, and able to interest a university press to publish Saving Lives in Auschwitz. Purdue University Press said: go for it! While my teaching career was broadly based in European and Asian history, in the history of science and the history of revolutions, my latest interest is in genocide and Holocaust issues. Much has been written about the atrocities of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, but here is the story of astonishing feats of bravery and ingenuity in the cause of Saving Lives in a jury-rigged hospital organized by prisoners and serving the prisoners in Auschwitz.