The Oasis
Subtitle: A Memoir of Love and Survival in a Concentration Camp
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: September 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 355
ISBN-13: 9780312278694
Subjects: Jewish Holocaust; History; Biography / Autobiography; History: World; Historical - Holocaust; Personal Memoirs; Holocaust; Biography; Czech Republic; Friedman, Blanka; Friedman, Mirek; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Jews; Personal narratives
First sentence: We were passing bombed cities: heaps of rubble over which flew red banners inscribed with the words TOTALES KRIEG, KUERZESTES KRIEG! 
Description: "Mirek Friedman and Blanka Davidovich first met in Muhldorf, Germany, in the concentration camp known as Dachau 3b. Mirek, a freedom fighter in the Czech underground, saved Blanka's life by distracting the Nazi camp guards when it was discovered that she had used a fake identity to transfer from Auschwitz to Dachau, a camp where she would have a better chance of surviving.

Though Dachau 3b was perhaps the only camp in Germany where men and women were not segregated at work, the punishment for personal contact was death. And yet in this hellish place two human hearts ingeniously found each other. As their romance grew, so, too, did the danger for Mirek, who had infiltrated the camp on a secret mission. Fearing that their liaison might be discovered and Blanka tortured, he did not tell her of his mission and escaped from the camp, promising Blanka that he would find her later. After the liberation, months went by, and Blanka feared that Mirek had been killed.

Then one day, in Prague, he came looking for her - and together they discovered that the love they'd cherished in the camp had survived as they survived. Love was their oasis of hope, a treasure Mirek and Blanka would have for the rest of their lives."--BOOK JACKET.