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Gustav Palm kept his secret for more than forty years. He’d been a young man when Hitler invaded his native Norway. After being forced to guard a Nazi prison camp, however, Gustav took his only option for escape: he volunteered for the Waffen-SS to fight at the front.

Agnes Erdös grew up in privilege and prosperity as a child in Hungary. She and her parents were practicing Roman Catholics, but they were ethnic Jews, and after the Nazis invaded her country, Agnes and her parents were sent to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Miraculously, both Agnes and Gustav survived. And after the war, they found each other.

Told in their own words, Surviving Hitler is the story of two indomitable spirits who built on their life-altering experiences to overcome the past, help each other heal, and embrace a common faith in God that led them to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the autumn of 1940, the German high commissioner in Norway was the Nazi Josef Terboven. In a speech to the Norwegian people, he promised full freedom and independence for the Norwegian people who rallied around the political party Nasjonal Samling, or National Socialist Party (NSP).

What was I to do? If we obeyed the demands of the high commissioner, then it seemed to me that we had not committed a treasonous act. Such thoughts tumbled around in my young mind. No one was willing or able to give me guidance. One year after Josef Terboven’s famous speech, I decided to join the National Socialist Party, and I became a member in January 1942. When my family and neighbors found out what I had done, it was a huge shock to them. Nevertheless, even then no one gave me any counsel on what I should or should not do.

When I came in contact with the National Socialist Party, I met people with independent ideas, enterprising and bold, and I shared many of those ideas. The people were ambitious and fully engaged, believing deeply in what they were being taught.