Roman's Journey

<p>Roman Halter was a spirited optimistic schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German-Polish) neighbors of their small town in western Poland greet the arrival of Hitler's armies with kisses and swastika flags. </p><p><br></p><p>Within days the family home had been seized 12-year-old Roman had become a slave of the local SS chief and returning from an errand he silently witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. So began his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe that claimed the lives of his family and the 800-strong community of his boyhood. </p><p><br></p><p>Incredibly he survived the Lodz ghetto Auschwitz the Stutthof concentration camp and a slave factory in Dresden only to find this his native village post-war was nothing like the home he remembered.</p>