An Incredible True Story of Triumph Over the Third Reich.
With an introduction by notorious Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal
"I want to stay alive!" This was the anguished cry of twenty-year-old Marian Pretzel, a young Jewish art student in Lvov, Poland. The year was 1942: the Germans had occupied Lvov, Marian's family had been taken away by the Gestapo and Marian sent to the infamous Janowska concentration camp . . .
Marian Pretzel did survive by devising his own unique method of staying alive . . . by forgery! Already familiar with the Germanic obsession with correct documentary procedure and their respect for an official stamp, Marian became a skilled and daring underground forger. Aided and abetted by a motley bunch of co-conspirators, Marian made a laughing stock of the German bureaucrats who, when faced with seemingly official documents, unquestioningly accepted their authenticity and authority.
This wartime memoir is inspiring, full of danger and suspense and tells how one cocky young man managed to survive the horror of the Nazi occupation with both his optimism and humour intact.
