Memoirs of a Jew born in Metz, France, in 1933. In 1940 his father, a French soldier, was taken prisoner by the Germans. He, with his mother and younger brother and sister, fled to southwest France; however, they were arrested in 1942 by French police. His mother was deported to Auschwitz and killed. Premilat was sent to various institutions and in early 1944 was deported to Drancy, where he found his siblings. He insisted that they be sent with him to Bergen-Belsen, where two Jewish women took care of them. Describes the heroic behavior of all the women in block 23, the cruelty of the Nazi guards and the Polish kapos, and his winning of an "Olympic" race at the camp. He was once saved from death at the hands of a Polish kapo by a German officer. He and his siblings were sent on a death transport, during which they were liberated by the Soviet army. They were then returned to France and reunited with their father.