The gripping story of a Jewish boy's astonishing courage - and survival - amid the horror of the Nazi invasion of Poland as told to Melbourne Holocaust Museum director Warren Fineberg.

As I look back on the events of my childhood, I see how often I was robbed of happiness during those years. But I don't want to carry this feeling to my grave. Instead, I want to think about my triumph over adversity, those times when I was in command of myself and the situation.

Szaja Chaskiel was just 13 years old when the Gestapo knocked at the family door and asked his father to choose 10 Jews to hang in retribution for the killing of cattle. When Szaja's father refused he was shot in the chest. The family was forced to wait nine awful days before Szaja and his younger sister could take their father's body and bury him in the icy ground of the Jewish cemetery.

Soon after, Szaja was sent to Poznan to build roads for the German army. Despite hunger, exhaustion and injury, he escaped from his work group and found shelter in a Catholic presbytery. When it became too dangerous for the parish to hide him, young Szaja set off in a bid to return to his family.

This is the true story of a Polish Jewish boy who for months evaded the Nazis, endured the Lodz Ghetto, survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, but lost most of his family. After the war Szaja Chaskiel built a new life in Australia, where he later told his incredible story of courage, loss, and hope to Warren Fineberg, then Executive Director of the Jewish Holocaust Centre.

It is a story of boyish adventure, hardship and tragedy, and of hope and forgiveness.