Destined to Live

On the night of August 28, 1939 in a romantic garden in the city of Lvov a young Jewish couple declared their love. Early the next morning the young man, an army reservist, was suddenly called up as Poland prepared to defend itself against the imminent Nazi onslaught. So began the desperate odyssey of Wilo Ungar.In this tale the reader follows a soldier into the crucible of the Blitzkrieg. The only Jewish fighter in his unit, Ungar volunteered for a perilous mission and was badly wounded in the collapse of Poland's dramatic last-ditch effort to break the German advance. Given the last rites by a priest who believed he was Catholic, for months afterward Wilo languished in a German military hospital, where his captors were equally ignorant of his identity. Finally released, he made his way on crutches back through war-ravaged Poland sustained only by an unquenchable need to be reunited with his beloved.Wilo and Wusia were married, secure in the belief that Hitler would not dare to attack Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. With Wusia pregnant and near term, the German armies smashed across Russian lines and Lvov's Jews were thrown into the terror of the Holocaust.For a year, Wilo, Wusia and their baby Michael evaded the Nazi roundups, but on a warm June day in 1942 their luck ended. In a massive deportation action, Wilo was sent to the right, Wusia and Michael to the left. In a moment his wife and child were gone, disappeared into the void of "resettlement in the east." Thus began Wilo's second journey - to find his vanished loved ones and to survive himself in a place where the Nazi death machine was in full cry.