In 2022, Holo­caust sur­vivor Tova Fried­man pub­lished her orig­i­nal mem­oir of impris­on­ment, tor­ment, and sur­vival in Auschwitz. Now she has adapt­ed her book for old­er mid­dle-grade and young adult read­ers. Her clear deliv­ery of details and unstint­ing hon­esty con­vey the hor­rors of what she, and many oth­ers, endured, and for con­firms how chance cir­cum­stances so often deter­mined who would live and who would die.

The book begins when Tova (then named Tola) has arrived in New York City as a refugee, filled with a sense of alien­ation. An alleged­ly help­ful school prin­ci­pal tries to con­vince her to change her cloth­ing style in order to fit in with the oth­er stu­dents. Worse, he sug­gests she should cov­er the tat­too that will mark her for­ev­er as a for­mer inmate of Auschwitz. She is also pres­sured to change her name to Susan, erad­i­cat­ing her past life in Poland. 

Then, Fried­man recounts her trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences in the Holo­caust in a series of chap­ters that seem anal­o­gous to Dante’s Infer­no. Begin­ning with the unan­tic­i­pat­ed vio­lent per­se­cu­tion of Poland’s Jews, and con­tin­u­ing through the respec­tive com­po­nents of hell, she describes such

atroc­i­ties as ​“The Shav­ing,” ​“The Tat­too,” and even ​“The Gas Cham­ber.” Forced to wait out­side this place of mass exe­cu­tion, she and oth­er Jew­ish chil­dren are final­ly sent back to their bar­racks. Since Sovi­et troops are approach­ing, the Nazis have begun to shut down their appa­ra­tus of death. 

Tola’s close rela­tion­ship with her moth­er is her story’s anchor. With unbe­liev­able strength, this woman lays out a series of strict rules for her daugh­ter, con­vinc­ing the six-year-old that fol­low­ing them will ensure her sur­vival. Adher­ing to this plan does not alle­vi­ate Tola’s anguish. She reg­is­ters no emo­tions, and, with the under­state­ment that char­ac­ter­izes her tone, reports, ​“I’d feel noth­ing, just numb­ness and empti­ness.” Yet she accepts that, amidst the chaot­ic envi­ron­ment of the death camp, fol­low­ing her mother’s strate­gies for elud­ing death was her only pos­si­ble course of action. When her moth­er dis­ap­pears, Tola incor­po­rates her instruc­tions in spite of dai­ly evi­dence that she is doomed. With painful frank­ness, the author admits that, like oth­er inmates, she some­times fright­ens younger chil­dren to gain an illu­sion of con­trol and power.

After the camp is lib­er­at­ed, Tola is reunit­ed with both her par­ents. Their attempt to return home forces them to con­front the cru­el real­i­ty that anti­semitism in Poland has out­lived the Jews them­selves, most of whom had per­ished. After spend­ing time in a sana­to­ri­um for treat­ment of tuber­cu­lo­sis, and in the com­par­a­tive com­fort and secu­ri­ty of a camp for dis­placed per­sons in the Amer­i­can zone of occu­pa­tion, Tola and her fam­i­ly leave for New York. She lat­er moves to Israel, and final­ly returns to live in the Unit­ed States.

Giv­en the scale of her own suf­fer­ing and the vast num­bers of Jews mur­dered, Tola won­ders if she might be ​“the last Jew­ish child in the world.” The ques­tion she shared with oth­er sur­vivors, about what had allowed her to live and tell her sto­ry, can nev­er be answered. Tova Friedman’s pur­pose in speak­ing and writ­ing about the Holo­caust is not to pro­vide com­fort­ing answers, but sim­ply to tell the truth. That truth, she hopes, will warn the world about the dan­gers of anti­semitism and oth­er hatreds, as well as the com­pla­cen­cy that allowed these poi­sons to take root and grow.

This high­ly rec­om­mend­ed book includes a Q&A with the author.