ST. LOUIS, Mo. – It was like a first-time meeting of old friends. Three members of a Survivor's club that were last together 72 years ago.
"My father was killed in Auschwitz, along with my brother," explained Michael Bornstein.
The 77-year-old Bornstein was just 4 years old when he was filmed by Soviet soldiers being led out of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in 1945. The average child his age survived only two weeks in the camp but a well-timed illness saved his life when his grandmother took him to the so-called infirmary.
"She hid me there while the Nazi's had a death march of 60,000 people," said Bornstein.
For years, Bornstein preferred not to leaf through the pages of those memories but his daughter changed his mind.
"I don't know if I can put into words the burden that the child of a survivor feels to make sure the story is remembered," Debbie Bornstein Hollinstat told us.
It's all chronicled in a new book called "Survivors Club. The true story of a very young prisoner of Auschwitz."
The journey begins in a small Polish village in the wake of the German invasion in 1939.
After first being assigned to a labor camp, the Bornstein family was packed on trains like a herd of cattle with thousands of other Jewish families and relocated to Auschwitz in July 1944.
"When I ride a subway in New York City, I think about that cattle car ride and close my eyes and think about the ride to Auschwitz," said Bornstein.
In researching the book, Debbie Bornstein Hollinstat, a Washington University Grad, learned that her grandfather who didn't survive risked his own life to save many others.
"It was a really exciting day that I'll never forget. To be able to go to my dad and tell him your dad who wish you remembered was a heroic man," Hollinstat explains.
After coming to the United States in 1951 and becoming a citizen, Michael Bornstein had a successful career after earning his PhD from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy.
The book was also seen by the two girls at his side on liberation day and it turns out, they all live only a few miles away today in New Jersey.
"The moment I saw the book, I said 'Oh, there is someone from the picture that's alive,'" survivor Tova Friedman said.
It's a story that goes back seven decades but seems right on time.
"This is the time in history," said Hollinstat, "When we want to make sure people remember what happens when you look away from discrimination. We already know how it ends so c'mon let's not do this all over again "
The Survivor's Club. A terrible chapter in history remembered so that none of us ever forget.
