The Yellow Star

Simcha Bunem Unsdorfer was the son of a well-known rabbi in Bratislava, the mother community for the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia. Because of the importance of his father's position, the family was permitted to remain in the city after the German occupation during World War II. Eventually, however, the family was deported to the infamous camps of Auschwitz where the Unsdorfers were separated and the parents killed. Their nineteen-year-old son Simcha was transferred from Auschwitz to work in an airplane factory in the Buchenwald camp. Throughout his long and terrible ordeal, he and his fellow prisoners were mercilessly molested by the S.S. men, but they held on to life tenaciously, their faith in God and His Torah never wavering. When the war finally ended, workers and prisoners were freed and permitted to go home. Simcha Bunem Unsdorfer has written a deeply moving account of his experiences as a devout Jew in the concentration camps and factories of the Nazi Reich. The Yellow Star is a painful story, but a heroic one, a book that cogently describes the Divine strength inherent in the Jewish soul.