The Touch of an Angel

The Touch of an Angel is the extraordinary story of a child's survival of the Holocaust. Henryk Sch nker was born into a Jewish family in Krak w, Poland, in 1931, but when he was a small boy, his family moved to Oświęcim, renamed Auschwitz during the German occupation. At the height of Nazi oppression, when nothing but luck and a strong will to survive could save Jewish people, both he and his family managed to escape death, even in the cauldron of the Holocaust in Auschwitz. Sch nker's testimony reveals an even more astonishing fact, however: the town of Oświęcim could have become the departure point for a mass emigration of Jewish people instead of the place of their annihilation. Documents included with the narrative provide support for this claim. Although he was only a child at the time, Henryk Sch nker's life experience was the Holocaust. Even so, death and the threat of death are not the focus of this memoir. Instead, Sch nker, with a touching personal style, chooses to focus on how life can defy destruction, how spirituality can protect physical existence, and how real the presence of higher powers can be if one never loses faith. His story has been made into an award-winning documentary film in Polish and German, The Touch of an Angel, directed by Marek T. Pawlowski.