Synopsis

Ten-year-old Dina Frydman lives a comfortable middle class life with her family in Radom, Poland in the summer of 1939, just weeks before the Nazi invasion. The love of family and friends offer no protection against the menace of the Nazi regime that begins to siphon off the worldly and spiritual goods of Radom’s Jews. We witness Dina’s battle to survive and understand the deadly apocalypse that transforms her from an innocent child to a teenage/adult. When her family is deported and murdered at Treblinka she finds safety at a forced labor facility where she experiences her first taste of love when she at thirteen meets Natek Korman, a passionate sixteen year old who rekindles her will to live. Forced by the Nazis to separate, the young lovers vow to find each other after the war. From work camps to death camps, Dina survives against all odds. The aftermath of six years of death and destruction presents a new obstacle, how to live? With the war over Dina travels from a German castle to a DP facility and finally a school for orphans as she struggles to reclaim her life. In 1945, she is reunited with Natek Korman only to face the most important decision of her life. She chooses to follow her dream.

In the Face of Evil is a timeless story of the upheavals of war, the tenacious endurance of love and the resilience of the human spirit.  It is an epic journey through the nightmare of the Holocaust—the single most defining moment in modern history, as told through the eyes of a young girl.

Excerpt

“Arbeit Macht Frei” - June 1944

It is dawn and a kapo has come to tell us that we have been ordered to

come to the platz naked for a special appell. Surely the end has come

and we will be marched straight to the gas chambers. There is a relief that

seizes my heart knowing that the fight to live will soon be over. We line

up, maybe five hundred women, naked in front of a platform where a high

ranking Nazi accompanied by two other Nazi’s glare out at us. The tall

man as handsome as a movie star is a vision in his finely tailored immaculate

uniform jacket that is embellished with medals and ribbons of military

valor. He wears riding pants that are tucked into his freshly polished black

boots and wears his hat dashingly off center completing the picture of perfection

and confidence. I am struck by his white gloved hands that would

be more appropriate if worn by someone attending a dance instead of one

about to make a selection of who will live and who will die. I hear one of

the women whisper that it is Mengele, the infamous doctor and master of

Auschwitz. We all have heard what a cold blooded murderer he is and of the

secret diabolical experiments he is conducting on Jewish prisoners who

upon arrival are given a choice of being his guinea pig or the gas chamber.

It is difficult to reconcile his reputation for indescribable cruelty with the

good-looking man that stands before us.

We stand shivering not from cold, but with fear at what is about to come

as the three Nazis proceed to walk down the rows of women. Some of the

women, in vain, try to cover themselves in modesty. Stopping now and

again to inspect the teeth of a woman he clearly relishes the moment when

he makes his selection of “right” or “left”.

After what feels like an eternity he stands before me. I can smell the luxurious

spicy scent of his cologne. He is so close to me that I am tempted to

touch his perfectly coiffured hair that is brushed back off his high forehead,

every hair in place. His blue eyes drift down my body with a penetrating

gaze inspecting