First published 2022
Tova Friedman opens her memoir at age four, when she arrives at a Nazi labor camp as World War II begins. She watches friends and family die while clinging to her parents and their shared will to live. At six years old, she enters a gas chamber at Auschwitz but emerges alive due to German administrative confusion. Later, she hides from Nazi guards by holding a dead body for warmth as they select prisoners for the Death March to Germany. Working with Malcolm Brabant, Friedman documents the horrors she witnessed at the concentration camp and reveals a family secret that exposes the impossible decisions Jews faced to stay alive. Her account shows how she and her parents discovered sources of hope and strength that carried them through unimaginable circumstances. This memoir captures one of the youngest recorded experiences of surviving Auschwitz.
Genres: holocaust, historical-fiction, 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: survival, true-story
Setting: Auschwitz, Germany
Period: World War II
320 pages · Paperback · Hanover Square
Content warnings: child-death, death, graphic-violence, murder, physical-abuse, torture, war