Ruth Altbeker Cyprys was a young Jewish lawyer in Warsaw when the Germans invaded Poland. By September 1942 she knew the fate that awaited those being herded on to the trains for Treblinka. Her response was to acquire a pair of boots and a hacksaw blade. Daily she practiced sawing whatever metal objects she could find. In January 1943 Ruth and her daughter Eva, not yet two years old, were finally rounded up. As the train rattled its way toward the death camp, Ruth managed to cut through the bars.

She jumped first - for fear, she writes, that her courage would fail her. Her child was thrown out after her into the snow. Their first night of freedom was spent in a freezing dog kennel, Ruth licking her injured daughter's wounds.

In this journal, written immediately after the war and then hidden away, unread, for nearly fifty years, Ruth tells us a great deal about life and death in the Warsaw ghetto, about the terrifying deportations that began in 1942, about her own incredible escape with her child, and about their subsequent struggle to hide with the help of Christian Poles. Ruth Cyprys was a witness of the Warsaw ghetto revolt of 1943 from outside the walls, and of the drama of the Polish uprising of 1944.

Her exceptional powers of observation and memory, her phenomenal courage and tenacity, her remarkable ability to take breathtaking risks and make split-second decisions are the qualities that kept her and her daughter alive, and make A Jump For Life such a memorable book.