Defy the Darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele

(Hardback)

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This is the story of an ordinary young man with an ordinary life who, when caught up in extraordinary circumstances, turned out to be a remarkable human being. Joe Rosenblum endured the slow strangulation of his hometown, three death camps -including 18 months working in close quarters with Josef Mengele - and, finally, a death march, surviving through a combination of luck, ingenuity, compassion and kindness. He was sustained by a noble spirit, one so tough that even Nazis could not crush it - and a virtually unshakable belief that his simple and plain dream would come true. Throughout his ordeal, which included being sheltered by a Polish Gentile family and a stint with the Russian partisans prior to his imprisonment, Joe saved numerous people from certain death and only narrowly averted his own demise on nearly a dozen occasions. He deliberately set out to work for Josek Mengele and succeeded, carting out office trash along with corpses, all the while gathering valuable information for the camp's underground. At one point Mengele intentionally saved Joe's life by performing a vital operation. Ultimately, this is the tale of Everyman turned teenaged hero - a story of hope about a young man who did not merely survive the Holocaust, but who rose above it by radiating hope and humanity in a time and a place where there was almost none to be had of either.

Reviews

"Joe Rosenblum's story of survival through the Holocaust is a remarkable tale of resourcefulness, ingenuity and luck, which is all the more powerful for its direct and straightforward narrative. The opening scene of fleeing refugees picking clean the fruit trees in his mother's orchard in Poland presage the horrors that we know are to come. His ordeal through labor brigades, concentration camps and death marches bring the reader directly to the places--and the people--who have come to symbolize the ultimate evil. Although one wants to rejoice when Joe's liberation by American soldiers comes at the end of the war, such feelings are tempered by the reality of the Holocaust in which so many millions of people, including most of the author's family and friends, were not so fortunate."-Rabbi Andrew Baker Director of European Affairs The American Jewish Committee
"You'll be crying and you'll be cheering as this teenager, with a will to survive against all odds though he's reduced to a starving animal, outwits the Nazis at their own game. It's an emotionally charged saga."-Arthur Hiller, Film Director

Author Bio

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.