SURVIVING AUSCHWITZ

CHILDREN OF THE SHOAH tells the story of three young girls who survived Adolph Hitler's most notorious death camp and a young Polish Jew who defied Hitler by masquerading as a Catholic fighter in the Polish Resistance.

During World War II, Hitler murdered about one and a half million men, women and children at Auschwitz - the Nazi's largest extermination complex. Most of the victims were Jews. As Soviet forces advanced on Auschwitz in the winter of l945, the SS began evacuating the camp, force-marching 60,000 prisoners to Germany. About a fourth died from starvation and exposure or were shot by the SS for falling behind. In January, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and found 7,000 prisoners alive. Among them were three young children from Tomaszow Mazowiecki, a town in central Poland. Tova Friedman, 6, Rachel Hyams, 7, and Frieda Tenenbaum, l0, had not only survived the Jewish ghetto in their town but two slave labor camps. They even survived the so called "children's camp" at Auschwitz, which in reality was a holding area for the gas chambers. CHILDREN OF THE SHOAH is a haunting first person memoir of these three girls, their accounts combining the immediacy of the child's experience with the sophistication of adult hindsight. These intensely moving stories are a remarkable gift of insight into the Holocaust years and its implications for all of us. The dramatic and moving photographs throughout the book add to the powerful and lasting emotional feeling that the readers will take with them.

"NIEUWSMA, HAS DONE AN IMPRESSIVE JOB OF CAPTURING THEIR VOICES AND PRESENTING COHERENT ACCOUNTS OF THEIR EXPERIENCES."-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"THE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS THROUGHOUT ARE ATESTAMENT TO THE PEOPLE WHO BECAME NUMBERS DURING THE WAR." - SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

"HEARTRENDING?AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF HOLOCAUST LITERATURE." CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"ORAL HISTORY BECOMES AN ART FORM?A COMPELLING ONE-SITTING READ." - FOREWARD MAGAZINE

"THESE INTENSELY MOVING STORIES ARE A REMARKABLE GIFT OF INSIGHT INTOT HE HOLOCAUST YEARS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR ALL OF US." - THE HORN BOOK

"AN EXTRAORDINARY, SENSITIVE LOOK AT THE CHILDREN OF AUSCHWITZ." - AMAZON.COM

"HEARTWRENCHING AND HORRIFYING." - LOS ANGELES TIMES