Alan WeilerAs a boy, Alan Weiler lived in Vilna, Lithuania, a city famed for its Jewish learning. A promising student, Alan planned to attend the city's university and become a doctor. In 1941, when he was 13, Germans captured the city. The Weilers tried to fle, but were captured and brought back. Gangs began to roam the streets hunting Jews for bounty, dragging them to prison or massacre. Alan and his family were stripped of their belongings and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, where many starved or died. The Ghetto was itself only a stop on the way to a succession of concentration camps, where the only alternatives were slave labor or slaughter. Yet through a combination of guile, linguistic ability, and luck, Alan survived. During the Holocaust, about 95 percent of Lithuania's quarter-million Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In telling his story to journalist Peter Harris, Weiler said it should be called God's Sabbatical Years, contending that "if there is a God in Heaven, he must have been on holiday" during those long years of suffering. Read More Read Less