The Compassion of a Deadly Enemy

As an eleven year old boy, David Lenga's peaceful world in Lodz, Poland, was destroyed by war. David survived famine, disease and horrors in the Strykow and Lodz ghettos, life-and-death selections, and wonton murder in the Auschwitz death camp, epidemic outbreaks in the Kaufering labor camp, and American fighter plane attacks on transport trains, during which hundreds of his fellow Jewish prisoners lost their lives. At the age of 17, newly liberated from Nazi oppression, David re- built his life in Sweden, a stranger in a strange land, with no family, no knowledge of the local language or culture, no money and no high school education. He was, however, a well-trained custom tailor, and these talents, together with his astonishingly quick wit and "street smarts" that had allowed him to survive the war, now set him in good stead to rebuild his life, accompanied by his beautiful, loving and supportive wife Charlotte.