The Daughter of Auschwitz

Tova Friedman (Author)
Tova Friedman was born in 1938, just one year before the outbreak of the Second World War. She was one of thousands of Jewish children living in the Polish town of Tomaszów Mazowiecki at the time. By the war's end, only five children from Tomaszów were still alive. Tova is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and a campaigner against anti- Semitism. She was the director of a non-profit social service agency for twenty-five years. She is a therapist, and lives in Highland Park in New Jersey, US.

Malcolm Brabant (Author)
Malcolm Brabant is an award-winning British former BBC war correspondent, who witnessed genocide in Bosnia. He is now a Foreign Correspondent for America's PBS Newshour, with several accolades to his name. He met Tova at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Birkenau, and they became firm friends. He lives in Brighton.
 

An incredible story of courage, resilience and survival. 'I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and 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. (P) 2022 Quercus Editions Limited