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

Product Information

I just have to — this book came about as a result of Malcolm coming to report on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And he was talking to you.

I finished The Daughter of Auschwitz 2 months ago and have been putting off writing this review because I honestly don’t know what I could say to do this memoir justice. It is the miraculous, horrifying, incredibly disturbing story of a little girl who was born, just a year before WWII started, into a world of chaos and hate, brutality and evil, a world in which her immutable truth and experience was that being Jewish meant you were destined to die. Yet against all odds, despite all the deprivation and horror she experienced and witnessed, Tova survived. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. SIMON: ...Offered to remove that tattoo on your left forearm that says A27633. What did you tell him?Auschwitz imprinted itself in my DNA. Almost everything I have done in my post-war life, every decision I have made, has been shaped by my experiences during the Holocaust.” Such is the response of Tova Friedman in this compelling and confronting memoir, co-written with Malcolm Brabant, British journalist. As one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, liberated at the age of six, Tova recorded the horrors she survived with astounding clarity. Saved countless times by the strength and resourcefulness of her beloved mother, Tova chronicled not only the atrocities she witnessed in the ghetto and in the camps to which she and her mother were sent, but also her “survivor growth” as she honoured the 6 million Jews who were murdered by “build[ing] a meaningful life”.

In a powerfully written book, THE DAUGHTER OF AUSCHWITZ (Hanover Square Press 2022), Tova Friedman recounts firsthand experiences of how she struggled to survive the most heinous crime of history, the Holocaust. She chronicles her story of survival, under the direst of circumstances, beginning with the Nazi invasion of Poland until her liberation from Auschwitz. My story is not that unique, except that I survived to tell it. Other children, when they arrived into Auschwitz, were taken straight to the gas chamber. They never had a chance. Nobody had a chance. Somehow I had the chance, so I have to tell it. I had the privilege and the honor, along with one of my children, of having dinner a week ago with Tova Friedman’s daughter, son in law and grandson. I immediately started reading The Daughter of Auschwitz following our dinner (it was on my Goodreads list). At the very end of her time in Birkenau, Friedman was reunited with her mother, who was able to save them both from the final death march of prisoners as the Russians advanced towards the camp. After the war, they were reunited with Friedman’s father. Returning to their home town they were met with resentment and unabated antisemitism: children threw stones at Friedman when she went to school; her aunt was murdered by an antisemitic gang in Lodz in 1946. Included in the flood of Holocaust books were those with Auschwitz in the title, leading to emotional overload on the part of the reader; there were tattooists of Auschwitz, tailors, sisters, even singers. Auschwitz, it was clear, sold books.

Hobbies

In its wake came a veritable deluge of Holocaust-related non-fiction and fiction, sometimes hard to tell the two apart. Clare’s book suffered, in my opinion, from a surfeit of imagination, telling the reader things he could not possibly have remembered as a child. This is the true story of Tova Friedman one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. She was only 4 years old when she was sent to the first camp with her parents after the Jewish ghetto they lived in in Poland was liquidated. She was almost 6 when her and her mother were separated from her father and sent to the extermination camp Auschwitz II or Birkenau as we know it, her father was sent to Dachau. An incredible tale of courage, resilience and survival, Tova remembers the atrocities that she witnessed and will never forget, including many escapes from death. As the Nazi's roamed Birkenau before they abandoned the camp, Tova and her mother hid among the corpses to survive and escape. She wants to keep the story of all those who suffered and died, alive, using the memories that shaped her life to honour the victims.

FRIEDMAN: There was no question about it. And they wanted people to remember them. Remember us. Remember us. And that's what I'm doing. One of the reasons... The small family's arrival at the Starachowice labour camp occurred when Tola was five years old and while her parents worked from dawn to darkness, Tola was alone. Her mother had drilled the rules into Tola on how she was to behave around the Germans so she would continue to survive - they were rules Tola remembered all her life. Then at almost six years old, they were taken in cattle cars, jammed together so no one could move. It was the first time Tola had been separated from her father, as the men went in a different car. Their arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau made the previous years under occupation seem easy. So many would die in the extermination camps... She and her mother had been separated from her father at Auschwitz, not knowing his fate. They left the camp in April 1945. Her mother uttered one word, “Remember.” Tola Grossman is now Tova Friedman and she’s written a deeply vivid and affecting account of her life then, and since. It’s called The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival, and Hope. Her co-author is our very own, Malcolm Brabant, and we are just delighted to have them joining us from London. Hello, to both of you, Tova, and to Malcolm. This book came about as a result of Malcolm coming to report on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and he was talking to you, Tova, how did this book idea come about? A powerful memoir by one of the youngest ever 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. SIMON: Tova Friedman's book, "The Daughter Of Auschwitz: My Story Of Resilience, Survival And Hope," written with Malcolm Brabant. Thank you so much for being with us.Tova was born just before the war and didn’t know what peace and normality was. Raised till she was six in horrific conditions where death and skill of survival was paramount. Just occasionally you read a book and you know the words will stay with you for the rest of your life. This is one of those rare books.

As a memoir it reads somewhat like a history book, not as bad as some, but still a history book, so I didn't love that. Tova Friedman is one of the children in a famous picture taken in Auschwitz in 1945. The children have rolled up their sleeves to show the Russian photographer the tattoos on their forearms. As Friedman notes, “. . . of all the millions who entered gas chambers in Poland, such as Auschwitz, Majdanek, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, there were very few who somehow survived the experience. Our group of fifty children was probably the largest number to live to tell the tale.” Right up front the admission that some of her memories were passed down by her parents and her fathers written account. Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people who survived Auschwitz and one of humanity's greatest tragedies. In this moving and inspirational read she tells of surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler and being sent to a Nazi labour camp at the age of 4 with her parents. She is one of very few Jews that entered a gas chamber but lived to tell the tale!So, the first thing what he did, though, he made a short program for your — I think for your TV, right? And it was fabulous. Mit jedem Tag, der vergeht verlieren wir Zeitzeugen. Die Tage vergehen und immer mehr Menschen leugnen den Holocaust. There was one sentence that stayed with me throughout the book, a fantastic line that summed up how hopeless and helpless their situation was: 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.