Ladislaus Lob - rescued from Bergen-Belsen in 1944 by Rezso Kasztner

Has it ever happened to you that you're browsing through your local library and a gem jumps off the shelf at you - you end up wondering how it is that although you've been a member of the library for so long, you haven't found this one previously? That happened to me recently and the book was Ladislaus Lob's Dealing with Satan. And that is how the golden thread of humanity tweaks us through literature. 

Ladislaus Lob is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Sussex in England.  He is also one of 1700 people  saved from the Holocaust at the age of eleven by Rezső Kasztner who was later accused of collaboration and assassinated before he could hear that his name had been cleared.

Ladislaus Lob in his 70s

Lob's book (variously known as Dealing with Satan / Rezső Kasztner's Daring Rescue Mission (Jonathan Cape) and Rezső Kasztner: The Daring Rescue of Hungarian Jews (Pimlico and Kindle) tells the poignant, personal, in parts touching and always astounding story of this rescue.

"Two months and a day after my eleventh birthday the gates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp closed behind me. It was 9 July 1944. Five months later, with the Second World War still raging, I crossed the border into neutral Switzerland, stunned but alive and safe."

Orchestrating our interview across the continents has had its challenges and Prof Lob has been refreshingly friendly, professional and courteous with me.