S. B. Unsdorfer was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, the son of the town's much-loved rabbi. At the tender age of nineteen he was torn from his parents at Auschwitz where they were selected for extermination on the night of their arrival in 1944. Simcha survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps to make a new life in england where he self-taught himself English sufficiently to tell his story. He went on to write copiously in Jewish journals world wide, with a special emphasis on children's stories, which were anthologized in stories of Simcha. He served as general secretary of Agudath Israel in Britain and was founder of its community newspaper, The Jewish Tribune, which he edited until his untimely death from a camp-related illness at the age of forty-three. His widow and two children live in England.
