In October 1943, a Nazi death train carrying 800 Jewish prisoners from Belgium to Auschwitz was traveling through the French countryside. Among the prisoners was a fifty-six-year-old rabbi named Moshe Weinberg and a fifteen-year-old boy named David Rosenberg, unrelated but packed into the same cattle car with forty other people. The conditions were hellish - no food, no water, no sanitation, barely any air. People were dying from suffocation and dehydration. On the second night, three young men in the cattle car managed to pry open a ventilation slat, creating a small opening - barely eighteen inches wide - through which people might escape if they were small and flexible enough. The men began organizing an escape. They decided to send the children first - anyone under sixteen who could fit through the opening. David, at fifteen and thin from starvation, could fit. But there were seven children younger than David, and the train was speeding up. They might only get a few people out before guards noticed. Rabbi Weinberg, despite being fifty-six and too large to fit through the opening himself, helped organize the escape. He lifted children to the opening one by one, helping them squeeze through, dropping them onto the tracks as the train moved. It was incredibly dangerous - children were hitting the ground at high speed, risking death or injury from the fall or being run over by following cars. But it was their only chance. Seven children under twelve were pushed through. David, at fifteen, was next. Rabbi Weinberg lifted David toward the opening. But before David could squeeze through, Nazi guards noticed what was happening. They began shooting into the cattle car. Bullets ricocheted off metal walls. People screamed. Rabbi Weinberg, still holding David, made a split-second decision. Instead of pushing David through the opening where he'd be shot while escaping, Rabbi Weinberg pulled David down and covered him with his own body, shielding David from the bullets. Three