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Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List popularized the true story of a German businessman who manipulated his Nazi connections and spent his personal fortune to save some 1,200 Jewish prisoners from certain death during the Holocaust. But few know that those lists were made possible by a secret strategy designed by a young Polish Jew at the Plaszów concentration camp. Mietek Pemper’s compelling and moving memoir tells the less-known story of how Schindler’s list really came to pass. Pemper was born in 1920 into a lively and cultivated Jewish family for whom everything changed in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland. Evicted from their home, they were forced into the Krakow ghetto and, later, into the nearby camp of Plaszów where Pemper’s knowledge of the German language was put to use by the sadistic camp commandant Amon Göth. Forced to work as Göth’s personal stenographer–an exceptional job for a Jewish prisoner–Pemper soon realized that he could use his position to familiarize himself with the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy and exploit the system to his fellow detainees’ advantage. Once he gained access to classified documents, Pemper was able to pass on secret information for Schindler to compile his famous lists. After the war, Pemper was the key witness for the prosecution in the 1946 trial against Göth and in trials against several other SS officers. The Road to Rescue stands as a historically authentic testimony of one man’s unparalleled courage, wit, defiance, and bittersweet victory over the Nazi regime.