Against the Odds
One War. Two brothers. Four personal journeys of survival.
This memoir began with letters from a synagogue president to his congregants reflecting on his childhood in Nazi Germany during World War II. After his death, his family discovered a much larger story: four intertwined journeys of survival.
Four stories emerged from the archives.
Years after the war, Jack wrote a series of letters to his synagogue in Garden City, New York, describing his childhood during Nazi persecution.
After he passed away in 2007, his younger son Daniel organized those letters in a bound collection. As the family researched further, they discovered more letters and that Jack’s story was only one part of a much larger history.
Meet the Four Survivors
Jack Minc
When he was 12-years-old, Jack Minc bore witness to the systematic destruction of his community during Kristallnacht before embarking on a perilous escape from Germany.
Years after the war, Jack wrote a series of letters to his synagogue in Garden City, New York, describing his childhood during Nazi persecution.
After he passed away in 2007, his son began organizing those letters and as the family researched further, they discovered that Jack’s story was only one part of a much larger history.
His first-hand memoir is a vivid, unsparing account of escape and reinvention, in which he emerges as fugitive, resistance fighter, and reluctant participant in the shadow economies of wartime Europe.
Joe Milton
Joe Milton’s incredible journey—beginning with his solo passage to England as a 15-year-old refugee—took an unexpected turn when he was interned as an “enemy alien” and deported to a distant prison camp halfway around the globe.
His odyssey changed course again with his return to Europe as part of the Allied war effort and culminated in the Normandy landings and the successful pursuit of key Nazi perpetrators.
Rose Minc
Rose lived behind the little Brussels dressmaking store where her single mother worked. Over the years, Rose had endeared herself to the owners of another local shop and when her mother and brother were placed on a train headed toward Auschwitz, Rose was taken in by that couple.
For years and through multiple strategic efforts, Rose survived through the extraordinary bravery and kindness of those later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, families who risked their own lives to shelter and hide Jews.
Vera Milton
Vera was an only child who lived with her mother in Prague, while her father tried to forge a new home for them far from the violence and antisemitism spreading from neighboring Germany. The day after her father returned, Czechoslovakia was annexed by Hitler and 11-year-old Vera and her mother could only get passage to fascist Italy (led by Hitler’s ally, Mussolini).
Vera’s mother was interned in an Italian concentration camp while she was spared the same fate by inhabiting a fragile, constructed normalcy under the protection of a local butcher’s family, whose quiet courage proved extraordinary.
Post-War
About the Authors
David Minc
David Minc, the eldest child of Jack and Rose Minc, is an attorney at law and arbitrator in the U.S. He resides with his wife near their children and grandchildren in Ohio, which, he jokes, is a great place to live, but no one wants to visit!
Sharing Jack's narrative was a prime motivation for this book, which David edited for Jack’s section. David also authored Rose’s section, which is based on his nomination and successful campaign for Rose’s saviors to be officially recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations.”
Mark Milton
Mark Milton, Joe and Vera’s son, is managing director of the family jewellery business established by Max Fischel and his father, Joe, in the UK. Mark resides in London with his wife, near their adult children.
Mark’s parents had not been very expansive in recounting their wartime experiences and he seized the opportunity to research and share their remarkable journeys, including rediscovering rare and long forgotten documents and trips to Gotha, Germany and Santa Vittoria in Matenano, Marche, where certain fateful events took place.
David and Mark want to recognize the assistance they received from the earlier work of Daniel Minc in assembling a large portion of Jack’s original memoirs, Veronica Landet, who added extensive research documentation, and editing assistance, and Carole Joseph (neé Milton), who contributed extensive content and detail to our family history.
Events
COMING SOON
Press & Media Inquiries
In Against the Odds, Mark Milton and his cousin David Minc (with the valuable support of Milton’s sister, Carole Joseph and Minc’s step-sister Veronica Landet), undertake an act of historical restoration. Drawing on a rich archive of memory, letters, photographs, and lived testimony, the authors reconstruct the extraordinary wartime journeys of their parents, as four Jewish teenagers whose lives were irrevocably shaped by the cataclysm of the Holocaust.
At its core, the book is a braided narrative of survival under extreme duress. Jack Minc’s first-hand memoir forms its spine: a vivid, unsparing account of escape and reinvention, in which he emerges as fugitive, resistance fighter, and reluctant participant in the shadow economies of wartime Europe. Around this primary testimony, the authors weave the stories of Rose, Jack’s future wife; Joe, his elder brother; and Vera, Joe’s future wife, each narrative rebuilt with care from family recollections and documented evidence. The result is a textured, multi-voiced chronicle in which four distinct trajectories converge into a single, intergenerational story.
Rose’s survival in Belgium relies on the moral courage of those later recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, families who risked their own lives to shelter her. Joe’s odyssey, beginning with escape to England, is marked by the bitter irony of internment as an “enemy alien” and deportation to a distant camp, before culminating in his return to Europe as part of the Allied war effort and his role in pursuing Nazi perpetrators. Vera’s story, no less precarious, unfolds in Fascist Italy, where she survives by inhabiting a fragile, constructed normalcy under the protection of an “ordinary” family whose quiet courage proves extraordinary.
What distinguishes Against the Odds is not only the drama of its events but the precision of its reconstruction, the sense that each decision and narrow escape, carries the weight of contingency. These are not grand historical abstractions, but lived experiences rendered with intimacy and restraint.
Joe and Vera Milton, rebuilt their lives in London after the war as did Jack and Rose Minc in New York. They became deeply involved in their adopted communities, a legacy continued by their children and grandchildren. In this way, the narrative extends beyond the page, linking one generation to the next, in a living continuum of memory.
Against the Odds stands as both testament and a transmission: a work that preserves the fragile inheritance of survival while reminding us, with understated urgency, of the human stories that history so often threatens to overlook.
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