It is written that only 10% of the Jewish children in Europe survived the Holocaust. Latvia and Lithuania, two small Baltic countries north of Poland, suffered even higher casualties. Only 1 - 2 % of their Jewish children survived, and nearly all of them were sent away and in hiding.

One little boy, Arturs Lejnieks, was 3 years old when Germany invaded Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. A Jewish orphan, he was forced to flee into the woods and roam the land in the care of strangers for nearly 4 years until Germany surrendered. About half of that time, he was in Nazi captivity. By the grace of God, he survived. Possibly the youngest survivor of the Holocaust in Latvia, he was the only child to survive his prison camp.

German Teutonic Knights conquered Latvia in the late thirteenth century. For the next five hundred years, she existed under foreign domination by Poland and Sweden.

In 1795 Peter the Great of Russia subjugated Latvia and much of what became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Only after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 did the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia regain their freedom and joyously declare their first independence in more than six hundred years.

On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Germany in an effort to avoid mutual war, but it was in secret codicils to the controversial Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that Stalin and Hitler mapped their division of Poland and the world. Stalin selected the Baltics.

One week later, Germany invaded Poland; by agreement, Russia looked the other way. France and Great Britain allied with Poland and declared war on Germany the next day. Latvia immediately claimed a position of neutrality. She had enjoyed independence since 1920 and was loath to risk losing it in a political gamble.

In June 1940, after accusing Latvia of joining Estonia in a secret, anti-Soviet military alliance, the USSR invaded Lithuania and Latvia. Soviet occupying forces established headquarters for their new Communist regime in Riga, Latvia. Immediately, they rounded up almost twenty thousand prominent citizens and sent them to Siberia.

Soviet brutality focused on the Jewish community, and soon the local citizens joined in the daily brutality.

Germany double-crossed Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, when Hitler's army advanced from Poland into Lithuania. The Baltic people placed desperate and naïve hopes for rescue from Russian oppression on the arrival of German forces, but instead of bringing liberation, the Germans' initial act of aggression was the execution of Jewish children in Lithuanian orphanages and summer camps.

Arturs Lejnieks was a three-year-old Jewish orphan when Hitler's army advanced into Latvia.

How does a three-year-old boy distinguish between a war of the masses and one that is meant for him? "Why do they want to shoot me? I don't even know them."

As German tanks approach, Arturs Lejnieks and his "Auntie" fled into the woods of Latvia, where they endured four terrifying years of hunger, illness and betrayal. Eighteen months in a secluded children's prison led them to Nazi death pits. A true miracle saved them.

Sent to America at eleven, he was faced with the struggle to overcome the emotional backlash of those traumatic years.

Fifty years later, Arturs Lejnieks, now Vincent Benson, the author's husband, has published his story of surviving the Holocaust and his healing. Initially a story of desperation, To No Man's Glory is ultimately an inspiring message of hope and faith.

The eBook version of the original book in print - with updates and larger graphics can be found at:

http://www.tonomansglory.com.

About the Author

Victoria Benson is a columnist, author and screenwriter. She is also a contributing author to Chicken Soup For The Volunteer Soul and The Best of Novel Advice. Mrs. Benson lives with her husband in southern Oregon.