Marching expertly in fives at a rapid, deliberate rhythm, we were an army of robots animated by the hysterics of survival. Our clothes, our shoes, our hair - had they been real? The homes we left only recently were in distant lands, perhaps of make-believe. Our parents and families belonged to the pre-historic past. The rapid succession of events this morning was an evolution of aeons. Elli and her mother are put to work: An abyss separated us from the past. Elli's brother, Bubi, goes off with the men. At the gates, they are sorted: Aunt Serena goes to the gas chamber. The second part of the book takes Elli, with her mother and brother and Aunt Serena, to the dreaded concentration camp, Auschwitz. Separated from the rest of the family, she never sees him again. There is only one way out of the ghetto, and that is into a labour camp. Elli and her family know they are being humiliated for being Jewish, but never in their wildest dreams do they contemplate 'the Final Solution'. In fact, during the Holocaust something like six million Jews were murdered. This is distressing because you know something that the characters don't know, which is where it is all going to end. They are summoned and herded together in ghettos, enclosed and overcrowded camps, running out of food, watched over by armed guards, waiting and wondering what will happen next. In due course Jews are deprived of their freedom. Aren't you proud of being a Jew?īut worse is to come. What's a yellow star on a jacket? It does not kill or condemn. Let us thank God for being together, in our own house. Mummy pleads, her voice gentle and sad, 'Elli, let's thank God for being alive.

I do not leave the house for nearly a week. It means having to hand in all spare clothing. It means having to wear a yellow star of David sewn onto her jacket. For Elli, this means having to take her brand new birthday bicycle down to the Town Hall to hand over to the German authorities. Slowly, and in calculated detail, the Nazis strip the Jews of all their status in society, and their possessions. The first part of the book deals with the invasion and occupation of Hungary. It can be quite difficult to pick up a book like this and start to read because you fear the nightmares, so I'll try and tell you what to expect. It is a truly shocking read, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it.

Her story is told in the form of the memoir of Elli Friedmann, who was thirteen years old in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded her homeland, Hungary. It is written by one of the very few who survived a term in the death camp Auschwitz. This is a book for those who really feel they need to know what happened to Jews in Nazi Europe during the Holocaust.

I have lived a thousand years author