Part thriller and part love story, this true Holocaust survivor story is about survival, defiance, resilience, perseverance and incredible luck.
From Fugitive to Freedom is the exhilarating autobiography of a Dutch high school student who outsmarted and outran the Nazis 10 times before miraculously landing in America, only to come back to Europe as a U.S. Counterintelligence Agent bringing his enemies to justice.
Shy 15-year-old Jack Boeki and his family survived the Rotterdam bombings after Germany invaded Holland in 1940. When mounting restrictions on Jews were imposed, followed by raids, terror and deportation, Jack was determined to avoid capture and became a fugitive. He was hunted like an animal, but he always stayed just one step ahead of the Nazis. With each narrow escape, the threat of capture increased.
Eventually he was caught and put on a transport train headed to a death camp. When the train stopped in Amsterdam, he escaped and ended up on a farm outside Paris. There, he met a U.S. Office of Strategic Services operative who needed Jack's help to re-establish communication with the resistance units and downed Allied pilots.
Jack's final escape landed him in England and then to the United States where he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to their secretive Counterintelligence Corps. Just two days after the D-Day landings, Jack and his team of agents began following the U.S. advance fighting forces that liberated France. The once timid schoolboy, now a fierce interrogator, was instrumental in ferreting out many high-ranking Nazis, Gestapo agents, and other war criminals. In recognition of his service, Agent Boeki was awarded the Purple Heart, the Normandy Campaign Medal, and the Falaise Medal.
After the war, Jack returned to Holland and learned that entire generations of his family had been murdered in the Sobibor death camp. With his family gone, he decided to leave the reminders of the horrors of war behind and headed to Canada with friends to start a new life.
Jack wrote this memoir to share his moving story of hope, bravery and perseverance against all odds. He wishes to speak for all those who did not survive to tell their story. Today, he is a spritely 101-year-old living in Toronto, Canada.
