It was Bronia Brandman’s fearlessness as a 12-year-old that saved her from the gas chamber. After she arrived at Auschwitz in 1943, she learnt she had been added to the list of those condemned to die. Catching sight of Josef Mengele, the notorious camp doctor, she summoned the courage to ask him to spare her. At that moment, allied bombers struck.
“He turned ashen and ran to his car, screaming at his assistant to take my name off the death list,” recalled Brandman, 88, a Polish Jew who later emigrated to America. “I was saved by allied bombing flights and Mengele’s fear of death. That was a miracle.”
Brandman’s testimony is among those displayed at the entrance to the death camp built by the Nazis
