Mr. Venetianer is a much praised writer with 9 books published. This is his first essay in historical account. Tom was born before WW2 in Czechoslovakia. In late 1938 his hometown returned to Hungary. Given that deportations in Hungary only started in spring 1944, the Venetianers were spared annihilation, contrary to what happened in 1942 to the remainder of their relatives who lived in the newly-established state of Slovakia. Altogether, the author lost two-thirds of his close family, who died in the Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Poland. When, in March 1944, the German SS invaded Hungary the Venetianers escaped to Slovakia, hiding in the Carpathian Mountains. There, when the Slovak National Uprising broke out, they were captured by the Gestapo. The author and his mother were deported to Terezín and his father to a German concentration camp. Miraculously they survived. In view of the catastrophe that befell his family, Tom's father decided to emigrate to South America