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SPRINGFIELD, N.J., Oct 14, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Polish-born author Normal Salsitz, who survived the Holocaust by pretending to be a Christian, died of pneumonia Wednesday in Boston at 86.
The New York Times reported Saturday that his daughter, Esther Dezub of Newton, Mass., had brought her ailing father from his home in Springfield, N.J., to a hospital closer to her home.
Along with his wife, Amalie Petranker Salsitz, who died in 2003, Salsitz wrote "Against All Odds," an account of how the pair, unbeknownst to one another at the time, had both masqueraded as Christians to steer clear of the Nazi death camps.
Salsitz, armed with a certificate of baptism given to him by a priest in his hometown in southeast Poland, joined the Polish underground to fight the Germans. At one point in 1944, The Times said, Salsitz actually killed some Polish partisans who were about to murder a group of Jews.
He then fled to the east and joined Russian forces as they fought to oust the Nazis from Krakow. There, he met the woman who would become his wife.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
