About the Nazi terror on your own doorstep - survive, tell, remember

Józef Wiśnicki's unique eyewitness account "My Fight for Survival", which he wrote for his family in 1997, is published in German translation for the first time in this book. Born in Częstochowa, the Jewish soldier survived the Holocaust and war through a spectacular escape odyssey that led him to Vorarlberg under a false identity.

In Bludenz, as a supposedly Catholic "foreign labourer", he found a job at the Schaub nursery and support from courageous locals such as Elmar Schallert and the former Christian-social politician Karl Zerlauth from Ludesch. He had to abandon plans to flee across the Rhine to Liechtenstein, which was within reach, on a farm in Bangs near Feldkirch, survived a medical visitation despite being circumcised, survived prison terms in Bludenz and Bregenz and finally internment in the Reichenau labour camp near Innsbruck, where he was liberated by the American army at the end of the war.

He also describes his life after the war, the initial emptiness, the return to his Jewish identity via the Jewish Committee in Innsbruck - where he also met his future wife Leokadia Justman - the reunion with his brother, and the successful emigration to the USA after years of endeavour.

His report is a testimony to the power of resistance and indomitable will, but also a valuable source for the hitherto barely documented history of the Nazi era in Vorarlberg from the movingly personal, often dryly humorous perspective of a survivor. Many photos and original documents as well as well-founded historical notes explicitly place the events in the Vorarlberg context and also shed light on the fates of some of Józef's companions.

Finally, his book is a wonderful addition and extension to the spectacular memoirs of his wife Leokadia, who describes her escape and survival in Tyrol during the Nazi era in "Let's Break Out!".