Clare English talks to people whose lives are on hold because of events in their lives which are often beyond their control.

As a ten year old German speaking Jewish boy, Thomas Buergenthal was sent to the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland with his parents. Once there, the family was broken up and he never saw his father again.

He talks to Clare English about the powerlessness of knowing that each day in the camps could be his last according to the whim of the SS guards. By a combination of great luck and childish cunning, he emerged from his ordeal alive and almost unscathed, and was placed in an orphanage where once again he was in limbo, hoping that his mother would come and find him.
His is an extraordinary story of survival against he odds. He witnessed the worst aspects of humanity and also the noblest. Show less