Leap to Life: Triumph over Nazi Evil

by Joseph Rebhun, Carol Field

Leap to Life: Triumph Over Nazi Evil is the personal, vivid, and gripping account of the youth of Joseph Rebhun in Poland during a period beset with hate and cruelty -- a period from 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland until the end of WW II in 1945. As a 22-year-old Jew living in the ghetto of Przemysl, Rebhun witnessed many atrocities but understood the even greater danger of being "resettled" to a concentration camp. He managed to protect his elderly parents and avoid resettlement by building and hiding episodically in a basement bunker for almost a year until the Nazis finally discovered them. Rebhun's father was shot in a nearby forest, and his mother and he were herded toward the cattle cars for transport to Auschwitz. Rebhun had planned for this moment by always carrying a concealed kitchen knife and a pocket knife. When the Nazis discovered his kitchen knife, they beat Rebhun brutally before forcing him and his mother into the cattle car. One of the most powerful passages in the book describes how Rebhun uses his pocket knife to chisel a hole in the door of the moving train, from which he and his mother jump off amid a spray of Nazi bullets. Miraculously, Rebhun survives with a minor bullet wound to his head. Tragically, he is never able to find his mother.

Rebhun fights hunger, cold, and despondency over losing both his parents, but manages to survive by hiding in the forest and getting help whenever he can. In what he calls the "greatest miracle," Rebhun outwits the Gestapo into issuing him a Kennkarte, an identification card in his own name, which certified him as a Roman Catholic Pole. With the help of this card, Rebhun manages to elude the Gestapo until the day of liberation in 1945.

Both autobiograph and testimony, Leap to Life is a moving and poignant account of the survival and triumph of a courageous man against all odds. Read it as a lesson in fortitude and faith.

The book is richly illustrated with treasured family photos, some of which Rebhun carried with him throughout his ordeal, once even risking his life to preserve them.

226 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2000