HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: The Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager's Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland

Even if you think you've read enough about the Holocaust, start this extraordinary eyewitness account, and you won't quit till you're finished. Bertel Weissberger (now Betty Lauer) was 12 in April 1938 when her father was expelled from Germany and went to America. That October, Bertel; her sister, Eva; and her mother—along with truckloads of other German Jews—were sent to Poland. Initially, they lived as registered Jews, with special curfews, work assignments and food rations. Then came armbands, herding into ghettos and the "liquidations" of ghettos by mass executions or transports to concentration camps. Bertel and her mother—the Nazis caught Eva—got forged papers and learned to pass as Polish Christians. This was a constant strain, as IDs were continually rechecked and bounty hunters were always searching for disguised Jews. Fleeing a series of near-discoveries, Bertel and her mother ended up in Warsaw, where they fought in the 1943 uprising and were deported to an internment camp, along with Bertel's Polish Christian "husband." They bribed their way out of the camp to take various work assignments, navigated the Russian occupation of Poland, walked to Auschwitz to look for Eva and stowed away on a ship from Poland to Sweden, finally sailed to America. Beyond the incredible journey, this day-by-day account of a teenager learning "survival dexterity"—how to extract assistance from the ambivalent, how to sense danger in the slightest gesture—is unforgettable. Map, photos. (Sept.)