My Leap to Freedom

In this book, Odette Spingarn gives us a first-hand account of the various camps of the final solution » she passed through after being arrested with her parents in a village in Corrèze, France on 31 March 1944.As the Allies approached in April 1945, she and her fellow slave laborers, all of them women, were packed into boxcars bound for a death camp. Odette took her fate into her hands and jumped out of the train, embarking on a long odyssey that she describes in detail. In the end, a German woman saved her life. Back in France, Odette’s youth and unshakeable optimism enabled her to build a new life, study, have a career and start a family. »