Levi Lerman was a cheerful and lively boy from the town of Ostrowiec. He was only fourteen years old when his life took an unimaginable turn with the outbreak of World War II in 1939, when the Nazi forces invaded Poland and occupied his hometown. Over a painful six-year period, Levi endured a harsh life in the Ostrowiec ghetto, suffered devastating losses, performed exhausting forced labor, and survived countless transfers to concentration camps, including the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the middle of this torment, a single light guided him through the darkness: his unbreakable determination to live and to protect his father—a strength that helped him survive against all odds.