For the most part, Wolfgang Hellpap feels like a normal German boy. Although his father is Jewish, Wolfgang is raised by his Lutheran mother and believes he is a Christian until he is called in front of his classmates in 1937 and expelled from school. He is only six years old and watches in confusion as his classmates call him "dirty Jew," spit on him, and throw bricks at him as he runs away.
By age eight, Wolfgang is taken from his mother and placed into Auerbach Waisenhaus, a Jewish concentration camp "orphanage" known for its brutality. After the SS troops march through and murder the youngest residents, Wolfgang is loaded into a truck with the older children and taken to the train station to be put into boxcars heading for sure death. But then Wolfgang escapes! The Holocaust and Beyond: From the Boy Who Escaped the Nazis is the amazing true story of one boy's journey from the horror and death of Nazi Germany to freedom and liberty in Israel and eventually the United States.