Extension of Life

About the Book

As a mortician, Michael Baumann, a Jew pretending to be Aryan, devised a highly unorthodox surgical procedure that converted Jews to Aryans. This helped more than 400 Jews escape from Vienna to Switzerland. With five other Jews pretending to be Aryan, an elaborate escape and spy network was created. While most of the operations were successful there were some failures. Some died so that others could live. Carefully researched, the story blends fiction with factual history incorporating actual events and people. The novel creates a realistic portrayal of Jewish life and death before and during the Nazi takeover of Austria.

About the Author

Robert J. Bauman (b. Brooklyn, NY 1943) is a recently retired consultant from the plastics industry. This is his first novel. He traveled extensively domestically and internationally and, as a hobby, collected old paper money, particularly notes and related items on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. During a trip to Vienna, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, the idea for this novel took root. Anti-Semitic and concentration camp money, documents, propaganda and other material from his collection, recently donated to the Houston Holocaust Museum, are interspersed throughout the book. It is also personal. His father’s entire family in Poland was exterminated during the Holocaust.