In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen

"In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen" may be the most amazing, gripping book I've read. On many pages I was gasping or crying; my heart was pounding, my gut, churning. Oswald Rufeisen is one of the most unforgettable human beings I've ever encountered in the pages of a book. That this book is not more widely read, known, and available is unfortunate, to say the least. Had this book been fiction, not only would I have never been able to accord it willing suspension of disbelief, I would have protested its publication. The story is that outlandish. Oswald Rufeisen was born to an undistinguished couple. His mother was an old maid; an apparent arranged marriage wed her to a younger, distant cousin. The family was poor and often in debt. They lived in a provincial backwater. Their first child died in infancy. The second child, Oswald, was short, unobtrusive, and not especially handsome. Oswald's family's life changed forever, along with millions of others, on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Rufeisen family hit the road, along with other evacuees. His parents, too exhausted to go on, stopped. Oswald would discover, after the war, that his parents probably were murdered in Auschwitz. Oswald and his brother had begun their escape from Nazis in southwest Poland; they kept moving east and north, to Lwow, now in Ukraine, and then to Wilno, now in Lithuania. This region, the "kresy," was a site of deadly crossfire. As Germans advanced from the West, Soviets advanced from the East. Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians felt sometimes deadly hostility toward Poles. Nazis and Soviets did all they could to divide and conquer. Jews, of course, were targeted for complete extermination. Eventually, through a series of incredible coincidences, Oswald Rufeisen, a Jewish teenager escaping the Nazis, adrift in this terrifying ocean of conflict, became a Jewish slave laborer for Nazis, an SS interpreter, the organizer of a Ghetto revolt and escape, a forest-dwelling partisan, a Catholic monk, and then priest, and, finally, he would make aliyah to Israel, and thereby challenge the Law of Return and concepts of both Jewish identity and the nature of Christianity. The book does not depict Rufeisen as someone seeking adventure or heroism; in fact, author Tec reports he resisted publicity. Rather, fate seems to be a palpable force in his life. When he was a slave laborer, cobbling shoes for Nazis who threatened him with death were he ever to get sick and stop being productive, a Polish peasant passing in a wagon made eye contact with him. That peasant invited him onto his wagon, warned him that the Nazis were murdering all Jews, and invited him to hide out on the peasant's farm. Through that unsolicited rescue, Rufeisen eventually began to pass as a German. One event followed another, and finally he became the right-hand-man of the Nazi in charge of eliminating Jews from the district. Photos of Rufeisen reveal a boy with mar

It is seldom that one can view the depth of a human soul written by such a talented author. The book reads like a novel but has the pull of truth. I found it difficult to put down and wanted to share the incredible experience with others. It is worth the time to find a copy of the book. But, I warn you, you will want to own the book after reading it.