Bernard Mednicki, born in 1910 in Brussels, Belgium, describes being the youngest of four children in an Orthodox Russian Jewish family from Kishinev (Chisinau, Moldova); his father serving in the Russian Army until the 1903 pogrom, when he deserted and moved his family to the west; attending a cheder and public school in Brussels, where he experienced some antisemitism; being apprenticed to an orthopedic technician; becoming a Belgian citizen in 1928 and being married in 1931; how in 1933 he became active in the anti-fascist Socialist Party and anti-fascist resistance; the German invasion on May 12, 1940; fleeing with his wife and children to Paris, France, assuming Christian identities; traveling through southern France and reuniting with his family in Riom; the travails of fellow refugees; his work with the French resistance during 1941-1942 in Clermont-Ferrand, France; his sabotage activities with the Maquis in the mountains near Volvic, France; smuggling goods and other survival techniques to obtain food for resistance families; traveling with his wife and children to Paris, aided by American soldiers; returning to Brussels in 1946; finding his sister’s three children, who were hidden during the war in a convent and a monastery; arriving in the United States with his wife and children in 1947; and his memoir (Never be afraid: A Jew in the Maquis, published posthumously in 1997).