Even in hell, there is hope.
Henry Oster was just five years old when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. One of the 2,011 Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and deported from Cologne, he was one of only 23 to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war.
In the darkest moment of history, one child found the courage and strength to survive the unimaginable. This is Henry's true story.
One hot, humid day in July 1944, the Gestapo abducted fifteen-year-old Henry and his mother, forcing them onto cramped cattle cars in the Lodz Polish Ghetto. Like so many Jews before them, they had been selected to disappear - they were being sent to Auschwitz.
Exhausted after hours of travelling, they finally emerged from the stifling, filth-ridden cattle car. Already devastated at having lost his father to starvation, Henry clutched his mother's frail hand, knowing she was all he had left in the world and that he was the only one left to protect her. In a flash, he felt them being brutally torn apart.
Crying out for her, his heart shuddered as he watched her disappear into a sea of other women. Henry knew that was the last time he would ever see her and he felt like he had failed her. He was now completely alone in the world.
Starving and close to giving up all hope, Henry volunteered to work in the stables, responsible for breeding horses for the war effort. As he watched other prisoners leave and never return, Henry quickly realised these horses were his only lifeline - because every morning he was sent to the stables, was one more morning he escaped the gas chambers.
Before long, caring for the horses became a passion and their comfort and strength gave Henry a glimmer of life and hope in an ocean of death. Although, with every second that passed, Henry knew if he became too weak or made one mistake, he would be mercilessly replaced...
This is the heart-wrenching and inspirational true account of a courageous little German boy who, against all odds, after losing almost everything a human being can lose, survived to tell his story.
