LAST SURVIVOR

Stowed away on the top of a train, 20 year Wim Aloserij escapes the obligatory work camps in Nazi-ruled Germany in 1943. The young man from Amsterdam then goes into hiding on a farm, sleeping for months in a wooden chest hidden underground, but it's not to last. In the cover of night Wim is captured during a raid and transported to the infamous Gestapo prison in Amsterdam. There he is thrown into the nightmare of the Holocaust and transported into Camp Amersfoort, the first of three concentration camps he must endure. 'Welcome to paradise' the SS guard had mumbled as he handed Wim a small stack of clothes and a buttoned-up sack of jangling items. He saw they had been stamped with the number 6178. As the victim of an alcoholic and abusive father, he is forced to adapt quicky and urgently to his hellish surroundings. However it is with the end of the war in sight that Wim must draw on every last strength he has when he finds himself caught in the very centre of Allied-Nazi crossfire. In the final days of the war he was bombed while aboard a Nazi prison boat and at the age of 94 finally felt ready to tell his incredible story which he had kept secret for most of his life. 324pp.