I Will Come Back for You: A Family Torn Apart by War and a Son's Search to Save Them

The incredible story of Manfred Gans, who raced across Germany in May 1945 to free his parents from a concentration camp

Four days after Germany’s surrender in May 1945, a young British officer hopped in a Jeep and headed east into Germany. But this was no ordinary soldier. Manfred Gans was searching for his family.

As a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany, Manfred Gans had fled to England. As soon as he could, he signed up to fight, serving in the legendary British “Three Troop,” an elite unit made up of German-speaking refugees, and joining in the D-Day Normandy landings. Working undercover, Gans obtained vital intelligence, helped liberate occupied France and the Netherlands, and saved countless lives on both sides of the front. All the while, he dreamed of being reunited with his family.

As the war came to an end, chaos reigned in defeated Wehrmacht soldiers faced columns of American and British soldiers, concentration camp survivors crossed paths with SS guards, and Soviet military roadblocks controlled the route to the east. But Gans managed to overcome all these obstacles to finally reach the place where his parents had last been Theresienstadt. There, incredibly, he found his parents still alive. I Will Come Back for You is Manfred Gans’s remarkable story.