Against All Odds: A Tale of Two Survivors

First edition. Inscribed and signed by authors on front endpaper ('To Dr. N. Tepper, Never to forgive! Never to forget! Amalie & Norman Salsitz'). Jacket edges rubbed with a few small tears, chips, and creases. 1990 Hard Cover. xvi, 398 pp. Includes section of black-and-white photographic plates. A firsthand account of the Holocaust, by two Polish survivors. From the jacket: Amalie was so successful in posing as an Aryan that she received a marriage proposal from a German officer. Norman saved himself by trading coffee beans for his life, with a Nazi official. The story of Norman and Amalie (her parents and friends called her Manya) does not end with their fateful encounter in Cracow. Rather, for the two of them it was just the beginning. Love blossomed and before the end of 1945 they were wed. Manya's long held ambition to become a doctor advanced a step when she was accepted at war's end into medical school (Universytet Jagielonski) in Cracow. However, complete concentration in studies was impossible, given the pressing needs of Jewish survivors who managed to drift into Cracow. Most owned nothing more than the tattered remnants of concentration camp clothes; all were desperate. Defeat of the Germans did not result in peace and security for Poland's Jews. Reports circulated of widespread attacks on Jewish survivors by elements in the Polish population. Manya found herself devoting a great deal of energy to providing relief and support for the desperate Jews she encountered everywhere. After the transfer of Norman from Cracow to Wroclaw (Breslau) Manya resigned from medical school. With the Holocaust becoming a subject of immense general interest, the Salsitzes have found themselves sought after for numerous newspaper articles and interviews and have been called upon to speak at an endless array of memorial gatherings honoring the victims of the German reign of terror.…