Dangerous Luck: Memories of a Hunted Life

First Edition.

120 p.; ill. Scarce book with minor scrapes/shelfwear to dust jacket. Heel and tip of spine slightly bumped, otherwise Fine.

From dust jacket:

In Dangerous Luck, David Makow brings into focus the profound questions as to whether a person's life unfolds by his own volition, circumstances, fate, or luck.

A teenager when the Nazi war machine rolled into his native Poland, he survived on his wits and his ability to make quick decisions that turned out to be the correct ones.

His first fortunate decision was made as the German army approached the city of Lodz, where he lived. While many were leaving by foot or horse cart, he decided to remain with his parents and wait for the Germans to arrive. Those who left were strafed mercilessly by German aircraft on the road to Warsaw. Another lucky decision was to move to the interior of Poland just before the Lodz ghetto was established.

In 1942, when the Holocaust began, he made his most amazing choice. Instead of trying to get as far as he could from the Third Reich, he went to hide in Germany itself, passing himself off as a Catholic Pole, in a foreign workers labor camp.

David Makow became Wosko Mieczyslaw. Suspected of being Jewish and sometimes blackmailed, he was protected by a Catholic Pole called Wladek, who set the others right about Jews. As winter set in and he feared that he would freeze to death working outdoors, he managed to find an indoor job as a painter. The German foreman realized that he was not a painter, and as luck would have it, did not betray him but taught him how to become one.

After the war, as David was heading east back to Poland, he was robbed by a Soviet patrol. He changed his mind and went west instead. Luck too brought him to Switzerland and the chance to catch up on his lost education that would lead to a successful career as a research scientist in Canada.