Surviving Hitler: the Unlikely True Story of an SS Soldier and a Jewish Woman

Surviving Hitler: the Unlikely True Story of an SS Soldier and a Jewish Woman
By O. Hakan Palm
Deseret Book, 2014. 227 pgs. Nonfiction

Little understanding all the consequences of his decision, Gustav Palm signed up to attend the police academy in Norway after the Nazis invaded Denmark, Norway and Sweden. He ended up on the front lines of the war as an SS soldier in the German army.  Agnes Erdos’ and her family were Hungarian ethnic Jews forced into a concentration camp in 1944 where her parents were sent to the gas chambers. In alternating segments Agnes' and Gustav’s wartime experiences are retold. Their near miraculous survival and their post-war difficulties are part of their touching story which was not told even to their own children until forty years after the war.  Their wartime struggles and post-war conversion to the LDS faith were told to Thomas S. Monson when he was visiting Sweden in 1984 and he later made their incredible story the subject of a talk at a local church conference. This is a unique Holocaust memoir, told by the son of this courageous couple. SH