Book: Surviving Auschhwitz: Children of the Shoah by Milton Nieuwsma

These are remembrances--stories of surviving Auschwitz--by three young Polish girls, Tova, Frieda and Rachel. They were 6, 10 and 7 respectively when the Soviets liberated Auschwitz in 1945. Less than 1o% of the 7000 Auschwitz survivors were children under the age of 18. The girls are now women in their 70s and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Montreal, Quebec and New Jersey with families of their own.

The absolute evil and horror of those years will never be comprehensible but should never be forgotten. These personal histories are not lengthy or sophisticated or anything other than simply told as they relate the nearly unimaginable events that defined their childhood. They grew up never knowing grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins. As Rachel says, "....I'm still left with holes. I am very conscious of not having an extended family...."

There are lovely, poignant black and white photographs of the young girls and the women they are now, smiling, happy, then and now.