On the nights of July 16 and 17 1942 French police round­ed up eleven-year-old Joseph Weis­mann his fam­i­ly and 13 000 oth­er Jews. After being held for five days in appalling con­di­tions in the Velo­drome d’Hiv­er sta­di­um, Joseph and his fam­i­ly were trans­port­ed by cat­tle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande intern­ment camp and bru­tal­ly sep­a­rat­ed: all the adults and most of the chil­dren were trans­port­ed on to Auschwitz and cer­tain death, but 1 000 chil­dren were left behind to wait for a lat­er train. The French guards told the chil­dren left behind that they would soon be reunit­ed with their par­ents, but Joseph and his new friend Joe Kogan chose to risk every­thing in a dar­ing escape attempt. After elud­ing the guards and crawl­ing under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found free­dom. But how would he sur­vive the rest of the war in Nazi-occu­pied France and build a life for him­self? His prob­lems had just begun.