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The Daughter of Auschwitz
The Girl Who Lived to Tell Her Story
(Children's Edition)
By Tova Friedman
Illustrated by Manuel Sumberac
Published by Hachette Australia
ISBN 9781761180767
This true story by Tova Friedman, who was one of the few child survivors of the Holocaust, recalls her story when forcibly taken as a five year old child with her parents to Auschwitz. It is the children's adaptation of The Daughter of Auschwitz.
To say that her story is remarkable is not enough and although I have read many stories about and from Holocaust survivors this adaptation for children is one that must not be missed.
It must be read. The Girl Who Lived to Tell Her Story is the true story, as told by Tova Friedman, which begins as she is telling her friend Lilly about it. 12 year old Tova arrived with her parents in New York in 1950 when she started school.
At school one day, she was taken aside as her teachers and principal noticed she did not have any friends or mix easily with her fellow students. Unsure why she had been singled out and called to the principal's office, she was frightened and steeled herself as she thought she was about to be punished for some reason.
A teacher and the principal had good intentions. Tova was told she needed to change her appearance to fit in with the rest of the students. They said she should cut off her braids, which she and her mother loved, especially as her hair had regrown after it was shaved on arrival at the concentration camp. They said she should wear more modern clothes and shoes. She was advised to wear long sleeves so no one could see her number tattooed on her arm. In addition to all that she had suffered, she was also told not to mention anything about her past, as no one wants to be reminded or hear it mentioned. They also said she should change her name.
A year later, her friend Lilly, who asked her about her story, which surprised Tova because her teachers had told her not to talk about it. On Thanksgiving she Lilly invited her to the family Thanksgiving dinner. On entering Lilly' home she was shocked to see such space, such luxury and a dinner table set so beautifully ready for a feast and only for the family and Tova. Lilly wanted to know her story and was insistent and it is through this that we read how a little, almost five year old child survived these atrocities.
The family lived in fear of the Germans, the Nazis, and she spent her time hiding under a table where she felt safe and warm, until one day the front door was knocked down and the family was forcibly removed to the ghetto. They lived in the ghetto until they were no longer useful to the Nazis when they were put on cattle trucks with thousands of others and sent to the concentration camps. Tova's mother, while terrified, was a strong, loving and protective mother who did everything she could to train her daughter to survive.
It is a story of remarkable courage, bravery, endurance of the intolerable suffering and also one of hope for the future.
Highly recommended reading for ages 11 onwards.
The author
Tova Friedman was born in 1938, just one year before the outbreak of the Second World War. She was one of thousands of Jewish children living in the Polish town of TomaszA w Mazowiecki at the time. By the war's end, only five children from TomaszA w were still alive. Tova is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and a campaigner against anti- Semitism. She was the director of a non-profit social service agency for twenty-five years. She is a therapist, and lives in Highland Park in New Jersey, US.
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