Josef Rosin started a normal life in 1922 in the small town of Kybartai in western Lithuania. Excelling in school he started at Kovno University in 1939, only to have his second year final exams interrupted by Operation Barbarosa, the Nazi invasion of Lithuania on June 22, 1941.

Life from that point on was anything but normal. With his resourcefulness and much luck, Josef survived in the Kovno Ghetto for more than two and a half years. At the beginning of February 1944, a few months before the destruction of the ghetto, he escaped into the woods of Belarus. There he met up with other...