A Chance to Live: A Family’s Journey to Freedom

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As a small boy, Pieter Kohnstam lived with his parents in an apartment in Amsterdam during World War II. By coincidence, one of their neighbors was the Frank family, including Anne Frank, who became Pieter’s sometime babysitter and playmate. When the Nazis occupied The Netherlands, the Frank family went into hiding, but the Kohnstams decided to flee. They made their way across Belgium and France, crossing the Pyrenees to Spain in a year-long journey filled with dangerous border crossings, and miraculous escapes. They spent the nights sleeping under bushes and trees, and hiding in barns, hotels, a bordello, and the homes of strangers from all walks of life, both Christian and Jewish, who took them in and helped them. The Bishop of Barcelona interceded personally to make it possible for them to travel by ship to Argentina. Based on a memoir of Pieter’s father, Hans Kohnstam, A Chance to Live is a gripping tale of struggle, determination and survival during the Holocaust, chronicling what is best about people, and affirming that we are, after all, one human family. With a new Appendix describing Hans Kohnstam’s subsequent life as an artst in Munich Germany