Twentieth-century Jewish history is embodied in this autobiography of a World War II Holocaust survivor who lives today in Argentina. Charles Papiernik was educated in a Polish stetl, a small town. Breaking away from his ultra-orthodox Hasidic teachers, he became active in socialist youth movements in Warsaw and moved to Paris to join his brothers. In spite of being deported and spending time in concentration camps, including Auschwitz, he survived the war and immigrated to Montevideo, Uruguay, where he opened a business and prospered. After twenty-five years in Uruguay, political and economic turmoil prompted him to immigrate once again, this time to Buenos Aires, where, once again, his business acumen led to financial success. He eventually retired, devoting his energies to telling the public about the horrors of the Holocaust.
One of the few South American Holocaust memoirs available in English, Papiernik's story is very different from the stereotypical image of Holocaust survivors in South America forced to live cheek by jowl with ex-Nazis. Papiernik took Uruguay and Argentina by storm and claims never to have encountered anti-Semitism.