Book

The Last Witness

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The Story of the Man Who Survived Three Concentration Camps and a Big Maritime Disaster 

Lying on top of a train, twenty-year-old Wim Aloserij from Amsterdam flees the obligatory ‘Arbeitseinsatz’ in Germany in 1943. He goes into hiding on a farm where he spends his nights in a chest, hidden underneath the farm grounds. Despite his efforts, he is captured during a raid and locked up in the infamous Gestapo prison on Euterpe street. He is imprisoned in camp Amersfoort and is put onto transport to Northern Germany a few weeks later. There, he survives eight months of deadly camp work at Husum and Neuengamme. Partly because of the harsh lessons he learned from living with his alcoholic stepfather. 
 
Near the end of the war, Aloserij ends up on the luxury cruise ship Cap Arcona, anchored at the Bay of Lübeck.While the allies force Germany into submission on the docks, the RAF makes a terrible mistake above water. Fighter planes bomb several ships and in a true inferno, 7.000 prisoners die. Together with only a few other passengers, Wim Aloserij survives one of the worst maritime disasters of all time. 
 
At age ninety-four, Aloserij finally told his story, an incredible testimony. Only a few days after the release of this book in May 2018 he passed away in his sleep.