Out of Auschwitz: a survivor recounts his liberation, at age 16, from the most notorious Nazi death camp.

• Author: Pisar, Samuel
• Position: ESSAY - Samuel Pisar - Brief biography

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Samuel Pisar was 10 years old at the start of World War II in 1939, when Germany invaded his native Poland. His parents and sister were killed by the Nazis, but Pisar managed to survive three concentration camps: Majdanek, Dachau, and finally, Auschwitz.

Located in Poland, Auschwitz has become a symbol of the horrors of Adolf Hitler's regime and of genocide itself Of the 1.1 million people who died there, most were Jews. But the death toll also included Gypsies, homosexuals, and other people the Germans considered subhuman, or "life unworthy of life." About 9 million people were murdered in the Holocaust, including 6 million Jews.

After World War II, Pisar emigrated to Australia, earned a law degree, then came to the United States, where he became a member of President John F. Kennedy's task force on foreign economic policy. In 1961, Pisar was made a U.S. citizen by a special act of Congress.

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SIXTY-FIVE years ago, on January 27, 1945, troops from the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz, while American forces were approaching Dachau. For a survivor of these two infernos to still be alive and well 65 years later, with a new family that has resurrected for me the one I had lost in the Holocaust, seems almost unreal. When I entered the gruesome universe of Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele* at the age of 13, I measured my life expectancy in days, weeks at the most.

WHERE IS GOD?

In the early winter of 1944, World War II was coming to an end. But we in the camps knew nothing. We wondered: What is happening in the world outside? Where is God? Where is the Pope? Does anyone out there know what is happening here to us? Does anyone even care?

Russia was devastated and Britain had its back against the wall after years of fighting Germany. And America? It was so far away, so divided. How could it be expected to save civilization from the seemingly invincible forces of darkness?

It took a long time for the news of the American-led invasion of Normandy on D-Day, in June 1944, to slip into Auschwitz. There were also rumors that the Red Army was advancing quickly on the eastern front. With the ground shrinking under their feet, the Nazis were becoming palpably nervous--and the gas chambers spewed fire and smoke as never before.

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One gray, frosty morning, our guards ordered those of us still capable of slave labor to line up and marched us out of the camp. We were to be shunted westward, from...