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My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
by Tova Friedman
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
"I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf."
Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau.
During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale.
As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited.
In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it's in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's meticulous research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about the world's worst ever crime.
"One of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau tells her remarkable story...A heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive account from the 20th century's darkest days." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Enriched by Friedman's earnest reckonings with her trauma and hard-won sense of optimism, this is a poignant testament to survival and faith." - Publishers Weekly
"[A] heartrending, lyrical account of a young girl's survival during the Holocaust." - Reader's Entertainment Magazine
"I read this book with gratitude and urgency. Gratitude for the courage Tova Friedman has shown in deciding to share her story. We are all the beneficiaries of such powerful witness. The urgency comes from the knowledge that as time marches on such vivid voices are becoming increasingly rare. Read this book, cherish the lessons. It is a book rooted in the terrible events of another time, but the truths it reveals are eternal." – Fergal Keane, author of Wounds: A Memoir of War & Love
"An unforgettable and deeply moving story. Malcolm Brabant brilliantly evokes the world of the ghetto and of Auschwitz through the eyes of Tova Friedman, a small child who survived the brutality of the Holocaust." – Jeremey Bowen, author of Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East
This information about The Daughter of Auschwitz was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tova Friedman is eighty-four years old and lives in New Jersey, USA. She is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and uses her vivid memories to write and speak against anti-Semitism and prejudice. She was the director of a nonprofit social service agency for twenty-five years and continues to work as a therapist.
Malcolm Brabant is a veteran, award-winning veteran foreign correspondent. Brabant has reported from over 80 countries. He has co-authored The Daughter of Auschwitz, with Tova Friedman, one of the youngest survivors of the death camp.
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