Holocaust survivor Bender was 11 years old when the German army invaded his native Poland. He lived in Czestochowa, a backward town steeped in medieval ideas and anti-Semitic attitudes--and thoroughly unprepared for the mechanized terror of the Nazis. When the SS arrived, Bender, his family, and the town's other Jews were soon segregated into a ghetto. Later, Bender and his brother were spared from the death camps because they could provide useful...