Chosen for Destruction: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor

Morris Glass was eleven years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and changed his life forever. A childhood filled with school, soccer, and cowboy movies was transformed into a nightmare of ghettos and camps, unending hunger, exhausting work, fear, and loss. Morris spent four and a half years in ghettos in his hometown and in Lodz (the longest lasting ghetto), two months in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and eight months in five camps that were part of the Dachau camp system. At the end of the war, he was liberated by the American army. During those years, he lost his youth, his home, and his father, mother, and two sisters. Out of forty-two close family members only Morris, his brother, and a first cousin survived. Dr. Happer teaches history at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although her specialty is southern U.S. history, for many years she has taught a course about the Jewish Holocaust. Teaching this course led her to become involved with the North Carolina Holocaust Council, and this in turn led her to Morris Glass. She first met Morris when he was the featured speaker at the Holocaust Commemoration in the spring of 2007. The story of his experiences during the Holocaust was so compelling that Dr. Happer decided that it needed to reach a wider audience. Not long afterward, she asked Morris if he would co-operate with her in writing a book about his life during the Holocaust. To her delight, he agreed. That was the beginning of a partnership and friendship which has encompassed some two years of conversation, research, and writing.