Jack J. Hersch, Author of Death March Escape

Jack Hersch grew up hearing the stories of how his father, Dave Hersch, twice escaped the brutal death marches forced on concentration camp prisoners by the Nazis at the end of World War II. What he didn’t know about his father’s experience was the incredible confluence of luck, fate, and will to survive that made Dave unique in the history of the Holocaust, which is illuminated in DEATH MARCH ESCAPE: The Remarkable Story of a Man Who Twice Escaped From the Nazi Holocaust 

Surviving one Nazi death march is amazing, surviving two is astonishing. But escaping from both is nothing short of a miracle. 

A few years after his father died in 2001, a cousin in Israel informed Jack that a mysterious photo of his father had surfaced—on the website for Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Unlike many of the brutal depictions of concentration camp survivors recorded by Allied troops, this picture was a headshot of Dave as a smiling teenager modeling contemporary clothes. Where did this photo come from, and how did Mauthausen’s museum acquire it? 

Jack will be sharing the answer to that question along with his father-son relationship and why he wrote his book.