Hanging by a Thread: The story of the Kotowski family

An extraordinary true-life Holocaust survival story. Yaakov was the youngest son of the Kotowski family, a well-respected and affluent Jewish family from the Polish town of Skulsk. The family, with its 8 children, lived in the town until the outbreak of the Second World War. They were not short of anything and enjoyed the respect and appreciation of both the town's Jews and its local Christian population, despite growing anti-Semitism in Polish society. The family's idyllic life was cut short abruptly as a result of the German invasion of Poland and the consequent persecution and annihilation of the Jews. The family was deported to a distant town, where they suffered appalling hardship at the hands of the Germans and their Polish and Ukrainian collaborators. The head of the family, who had sharp keen instincts, foresaw what was about to happen and instructed his children to scatter, in the hope that at least some of them might survive. This fascinating story is brought to you from the voice and quill of Yaakov and additional family members, who were thrown deep into the flames that fuelled the fire which annihilated six millions Jews - almost the entire population of Poland's Jewry, and who against all odds managed to escape from the fiery inferno. Yaakov's story cannot be classified in the genre of "Holocaust Literature" alone, since it is not only meant to immortalize the era and the memory of the disaster that befell the Jewish people for future generations; this is a story that constitutes an exciting human document, with dramatic components of the kind that are born only when a story takes place on the backdrop of a mega-humanitarian-disaster. The reader of this book cannot stay indifferent to the magnitude of the limitless satanic evil, which a twisted human mind can invent and execute. At the same time the reader feels a strong connection to the protagonists, and is deeply moved by their resourcefulness, lust for life, ability to survive, will-power and courage, and identifies with the real-life characters, who encapsulate both boundless love and sensitivity with toughness and resilience. The notion of "survival against all odds" becomes even clearer when you consider all this took place in the heart of occupied Poland, where they were surrounded by persecution by its anti-Semitic residents on the one hand, and that of the merciless German soldiers on the other, and all while being fully aware of the situation. The family members who did not survive were murdered in Sobibor, Majdanek, in the Jozefow Bilgorajski massacre and elsewhere in Poland. Those who survived, lived in the very same districts of Poland throughout the war, caught between the clutches of the deadly German predators and the sharp claws of the anti-Semitic Polish vultures.