Only eight years old, Daniel is deported to Auschwitz. Working at the ramp, he becomes Dr. Mengele’s “role model” during occasional inspections by the International Red Cross. As one of the famous “131 boys from Kaunas,” he survives Auschwitz and reaches Mauthausen on a death march. Weeks before the war’s end, he is deported with 20,000 Jews to Gunskirchen, where poisoning, plague, hunger and cannibalism kill all but 5,000 in the camp’s final two weeks. After liberation — just 12 years old and entirely alone — he makes his way through chaotic post-war Austria, reunites with his brother in Bologna, and travels illegally to Palestine aboard a rusted refugee ship. The two brothers never spoke to each other about their time in the camps.