An excerpt from Mitka's Secret - ONE week until the Official release of Mitka's Secret!

[pg.18]

To the boy Mitka, who understood Yiddish, Russian, and Polish but could not read, these words ["Arbeit Macht Frei"] held no meaning. However, he recalls that "someone, in my own language" —he believes it was either Polish or Yiddish—"told me what the sign said.”

The sign stuck with him. As an adult when he saw a photograph of the sign again, the moment of recognition struck like a lightning bolt. It all came back. In an instant he returned once again to Dachau's gate.

When the train stopped and all—the living and the dead—were taken off, the women were separated from the men. Mitka was made to stand in the line of women. He doesn't remember being told to undress, but he does recall knowing that he and all the women stood naked before the guards. "Can you believe it?"

It is a question he repeats often during interviews. He speaks it in an altered pitch. His hands move up from his thighs and drop back to his knees in a slap. "Can you believe it?" he declares, as if he's talking about someone else.

He was marched, together with the women, to a building where he "climbed steps down into a large room." He saw shower heads pointing down from the ceiling and pipes. Mitka speculates, "That spray— I guess it was to delouse. They sprayed us with something that burned, and it hurt really bad."

Mitka tells of how at one point he cowered in a corner, driven there by his embarrassment at being stripped, exposed, and vulnerable among "so many naked women." His cheeks redden as he relives the humiliation.

For the greater part of a year, Mitka had lived in three concentration camps. Sometime around September 1942, for reasons unknown, he was moved again. As with previous moves, yet another cattle wagon carried the starved, thirsty, filthy, sardine-packed prisoners down a track. This time the destination was Lager (Camp) Pfaffenwald.

The stop for Lager Pfaffenwald was unlike previous ones. When the train braked to a halt, Mitka and the others stepped onto the platform of a town's train station. He remembers a sign at the station. He couldn't read it, but he had heard those around him talking about it: Asbach.

To read the rest, get your copy of Mitka’s Secret at any major book retailers! Click here to find all the pre-order links! Officially out July 20th!