Book excerpt: HISTORY / JEWISH / HOLOCAUST. There will come a time, not too many years from now, when no one who suffered at the hands of the Nazis will be here to proclaim: "I was there. This happened to me. I saw this." It took Benjamin Samuelson 50 years before he could begin to relate his story to Jeff Shevlowitz. From his happy childhood in Rumania to the horrors of four Nazi concentration camps to the Israeli struggle for independence--this author's story is of historical significance; countless miracles; and the will to live, with abiding hope, to tell the world of what he had witnessed. The author is one of few survivors of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, reflecting: "I don't understand how or why I made it through alive. . . . I woke, ate, did the task assigned me, and had but one thought: Why? So many times, I considered walking into the air-tight brick room with the next group of people. Why didn't I? The only answer I've been able to think of is that some inner, divine spark of life would not allow it. I sincerely felt that by living, I would one day bear witness." And that day has come with the writing of this book. In order to keep the promise that Benjamin Samuelson made to himself more than a half century ago, he felt he must now tell his story, while he is still able to, in memory of those who can no longer bear witness to the Holocaust for themselves.