On the eve of World War II there were between 150 and 210,000 Jewish people living in the independent Baltic state of Lithuania. By the end of the war, or more specifically the end of the Holocaust, up to 95% of these

men, women and children had been systematically murdered. Meaning per capita, the Jewish community of

Lithuania suffered heavier losses than almost any other country. In his new book The Vow, The Love Story and the Holocaust,

author Michael Ruskin tells the tale of two of these survivors, David and Dora Ruskin, his parents. I recently had the opportunity

to talk to Michael about his parents story and his heart-wrenching yet inspirational book. For most of

Michael's life he knew very little about the details of his parents experience

during the Holocaust and it was only after his father

father passed away that the full extent of their harrowing story

came to light.

I'm the only native born in my family tree. I was born in Brooklyn, New York and all my relatives and my family were born in Europe outside of my brother who was born in Munich, Germany in 1946. My parents had retired to Miami and in

93 my father took ill and he passed away. So my brother and I flew down to Florida to the funeral

and then make arrangements what we're going to do

with their condominium.

And we both decided that we were going to sell the condo.

And then one night, late September, I drove over to their condo and I started arranging

the clothes and taking things out of the condominium, when I came upon a document in my father's night table, it was a document that was written by lawyers and doctors who were writing testimony to the German courts in Munich, Germany in 1964.

For reparations, my parents were petitioning the courts for the loss of their daughter and the loss of their families, both on my mother and father side.

In fact, I'm personally the last surviving member of my family.

When I found these documents that night,

I was reading through things I never knew about.

Their physical condition, their emotional condition,

condition, situations that happened to them in the Kofna

...