It was a miracle, but one achieved at a horrific price. In her book, Sara's Children: The Destruction of Chmielnik, San Diego journalist Suzan Hagstrom recounts the story of five members of a Jewish family who survived Nazi slave labour camps.

"I just saw their story as a footnote of hope and (felt) it should be recorded. Each story of survival out of this time is completely amazing," Hagstrom says.

She will be at the Jewish Community Centre in London tomorrow for a book reading and sale.

She first heard of the Garfinkel family in 1990 when she was a business reporter at the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. The paper had a weekend magazine for which reporters could write on their own time.

Hagstrom proposed an article on a Holocaust museum in the city. "What is a Holocaust museum doing in Orlando next to Walt Disney World and SeaWorld and Orlando's reputation as a vacation getaway?" she asked.

Museum staff introduced her to Helen Garfinkel Greenspun, a volunteer who did public speaking on her experiences as a Polish Jew during the Second World War.

Not only had Helen survived labour camps, death marches and death camps, but so had her sisters Bela, Sonia and Regina and her brother Nathan.

"I was quite amazed by that because it's a fairly rare occurrence in that time of history," Hagstrom says.

Many survivors came out of the camps to discover they were the only one left in their family. Even the Garfinkels lost their parents and a younger brother and sister to the gas chambers.

The Garfinkels had lived in the town of Chmielnik, Poland. In 1942, the occupying Nazis sent the town's Jewish teens and young adults to labour camps, while children and older adults were shipped to death camps.

Regina, 12, was supposed to die. But during the roundup, the Nazis didn't believe the blond-haired girl was Jewish and sent her away.

She was later put in a labour camp with Bela, 21, who fought for her own survival to protect her little sister.

Helen, Sonia and Nathan -- aged 15, 19 and 22 -- went to a different labour camp. Sonia fell ill, but Helen and Nathan displayed a powerful will to live and keep her alive.

After Sonia recovered, she became the healthiest of a weakened group and helped the others survive.

Yet in many instances, pure chance determined their fates.

Was it better to shrink into the background or be forward, walk or ride in a wagon, escape or stay captive?

"It was really so arbitrary and random whether anyone lived or died," Hagstrom says. "Although the Garfinkels realized helping each other made a difference for them, their conclusion was it was sheer luck they survived."

After the war, Helen and Bela, who died in 1997, moved to Orlando and Nathan, Sonia and Regina to the Detroit area.

After her magazine article on the museum was published, Hagstrom proposed to the Garfinkels that she write a book about them.

She expanded it by talking to people at an annual reunion in Florida of the few Jewish residents from Chmielnik who survived the Holocaust.

Some now live in Toronto, which brings Hagstrom there -- and to London -- to promote her book.

Like many writers, Hagstrom struggled to find a publisher. She says she was prepared to make photocopies of the manuscript and give them away to museums.

"It was a worthwhile project for my skills and I didn't want to look back and say, 'Did the Garfinkels meet another journalist who wanted to record their stories?' "

In the end, Sergeant Kirkland's Press, a tiny publisher based in in Spotsylvania, Va., picked it up. Hagstrom will also sell copies during her talk for $20 US.

IF YOU GO

What: Reading by Suzan Hagstrom, author of Sara's Children: The Destruction of Chmielnik

When: Tomorrow, 1:30 p.m.

Where: Jewish Community Centre, 536 Huron St.