The untold story of the only known Holocaust survivors to walk out of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and their remarkable second chance at life Early on the morning of October 9, 1944, seven hundred boys between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, were taken out of Block 11 at Auschwitz. The night before, during a visit by Dr. Josef Mengele, their identification cards had been stamped with a solitary word—gestorben—German for “died.” They were then marched by twenty-five bayonet-wielding SS guards to Crematorium 5, stripped, and herded into a gas chamber. This book is the story of a true-life miracle about the fifty-one boys who were pulled from that gas chamber—the only Holocaust survivors known to have escaped such a close brush with the Nazi killing machine—and given a second chance at life. A life, of course, that would be so horrifically snatched from those around them. Based on first-hand testimonies from six of the boys, six survivors whose stories are shared in this book for the very first time, Miracle: The Boys Who Escaped the Gas Chamber at Auschwitz is an unforgettable testament to hope and the bonds of brotherhood in the face of one of the worst crimes against humanity.
