Alexander Donat (1905–1983)

Alexander Donat was born Michał Berg to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland. He was the publisher of a daily newspaper, Ostatnie Wiadomosci (Latest News), and was married to Lena, with whom he had a son William, born in 1937. Following Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in World War II, he and his family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. From there, he and his wife were deported to several different Nazi concentration camps and slave labor camps, including Majdanek. At Vaihingen, he met another prisoner whose real name was Alexander Donat. They secretly agreed to switch identities for the next prisoner transport. Soon afterwards, the real Alexander Donat was murdered. Michał Berg decided to keep Donat's name permanently. He survived to be liberated from Dachau by American troops, and returned to Warsaw, where he was reunited with his wife and young son, whom Polish rescuers had placed in a Catholic orphanage, where the nuns saved his life. The Donats emigrated to the USA in 1946 and started a printing business. In 1977, he helped establish The Holocaust Library, a nonprofit publishing program that issued many books on the experiences of Jews in Europe during World War II. He wrote Jewish Resistance (1964) and his own memoir, The Holocaust Kingdom (1965), in which Lena described her experiences in the final section. He was also the editor of The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary (1979).