The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

by Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant, Ben Kingsley (Foreword by)

Overview

*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR BEN KINGSLEY

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 a 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781335449306
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	158,374
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

TOVA FRIEDMAN is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and uses her vivid memories to write and speak against anti-Semitism and prejudice. She taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was the director of a nonprofit social service agency for twenty-five years, and continues to work as a therapist. She has four children and eight grandchildren.


MALCOLM BRABANT is an award-winning British former war correspondent who witnessed genocide in Bosnia. His evocative writing style and forensic probing of Tova’s memories remind readers of the horrors of the Holocaust at a time when hate is on the rise around the world and history’s worst crime is fading from memory. He is now a foreign correspondent for PBS, with several accolades to his name.

Editorial Reviews

07/25/2022

Holocaust survivor Friedman recalls her experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau as a young child in this heartrending memoir. Born in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland, in 1938, Friedman’s first memories were of life in the Jewish ghetto. Suffering starvation, disease, and constant violence, she and her parents managed to survive several deportations and mass killings by the Gestapo. In autumn 1943, however, the family was deported to a slave labor camp in central Poland, and then taken in July 1944 to Auschwitz, where Friedman and her mother were separated from her father. “It’s estimated that more than 230,000 children entered the Auschwitz complex,” she notes. “Almost all of them were murdered in Birkenau within hours of dismounting from the cattle cars.... So why wasn’t I?” That question lingers over her harrowing memories of the camp, including the time she and her block mates huddled for hours in the concrete anteroom for one of the gas chambers before being sent back to their barrack. After the war, Tova was reunited with her father, emigrated with her parents to America, married, and began sharing “the lessons of the Holocaust” in Israel and the U.S. Enriched by Friedman’s earnest reckonings with her trauma and hard-won sense of optimism, this is a poignant testament to survival and faith. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

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

“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)

"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."–Jeremy Bowen, author of Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East

“[A] heartrending, lyrical account of a young girl’s survival during the Holocaust.”—Reader’s Entertainment Magazine

"Absolutely riveting book. Please read it."—Judy Woodruff, lead presenter and Managing Editor at PBS Newshour

“This is the real thing, the horrors of the Holocaust brought shudderingly to life, and all from the point of view of a small child who could barely read or recognize numbers… It is an angry book, but it is also required reading.”—The Jewish Chronicle


"Possibly the most astonishing book I've ever read."—Sarah Gorrell, BBC Radio Sussex

From the Publisher

★ 2022-06-22
One of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau tells her remarkable story.

When Friedman and her mother miraculously walked out of the extermination camp together in April 1945, her mother said one word: “Remember.” Now 83, Friedman has penned a memoir with the assistance of veteran war reporter Brabant, seeking to “immortalize what happened, to ensure that those who died are not forgotten. Nor the methods that were used to exterminate them.” Beginning at age 2, Friedman shares gut-wrenching memories of life in the Jewish ghetto in German-occupied central Poland known as Tomaszów Mazowiecki, where she and her family were forced to live. Eking by in overcrowded, often squalid conditions, they struggled to find food, witnessed the disappearances of family and friends, and lived in constant fear. “When I heard heavy boots,” she writes, “I knew trouble was imminent.” Throughout this time, the only certainty was her parents’ enduring love. “Beyond them…there was nothing but the abyss,” she writes. When she was 5, Friedman and her family were sent to Starachowice labor camp, and the author shares the raw details of the brutality and horrors that she and her family experienced. Then she and her mother were relocated to Auschwitz-Birkenau, while her father was sent to Dachau. Through luck and determination, they managed to cheat death multiple times; however, the psychological effects would last a lifetime. Although Friedman and her parents survived, their struggles did not end after the camps. They continued to face antisemitism and struggled to reassimilate. In one of the most haunting passages, the author describes a “recurring nightmare” of “walking among dead bodies…after which further sleep is impossible.” Despite the many horrifying ordeals she has endured, she remains courageous and faithful: “Everything I do, every decision I make today, is forged by the forces that surrounded me in my formative years.” Actor Ben Kingsley provides the foreword.

A heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive account from the 20th century’s darkest days.

Kirkus Reviews