Witness to Annihilation

Book excerpt: When the German Army captured Lwow in 1941, Poland's third-largest city contained a vibrant Jewish community of 160,000 people. Because the Final Solution began there so early, no other Jewish community of similar size came so close to complete eradication. In 1943, the region's SS chief proudly reported to Hitler that it had been "cleansed of Jews"; in fact, less than one half of one percent of Lwow's Jews survived the war. For the Jews of Lwow, there was no miracle, no Raoul Wallenberg, no Oskar Schindler. Mainly because so few lived through Lwow's nightmare, little has been written about it. Samuel Drix survived. A respected Lwow physician, he lost every member of his large and loving family to the Holocaust, including his young wife, his beloved two-year-old daughter, and almost all his friends. Somehow he endured nearly a year in the infamous Janowska concentration camp, helping his fellow prisoners stay alive. Miraculously, Drix escaped and hid out with the aid of a courageous Polish farm couple. Then the Red Army came, and the war ended. But peace only brought the Soviet brand of anti-Semitism. Homeless, sick, and broken, he contemplated suicide, until a woman's love gave him renewed hope. Drix began a new family - and in America, a new life. And, as a witness at war-crimes trials, he was instrumental in bringing Nazi killers to justice.