Suddenly there is a blow to my face, I am hurled to one side. ‘My child, I have to go with her!’ I scream. But Dr Mengel is standing before me, whip raised. ‘Maul halten, shut up!’ His eyes gleam. Filled with fear I cower down. In 1943, as Nazi power swept across central Europe, Rosa, her husband Emanuel and their daughter Judy, were forced into hiding. But after a year and a half of living a terrifying, day-by-day existence, they were betrayed. As they arrived in Auschwitz, Rosa was torn from her husband and her only daughter. Could she dare to hope she would see either of them again? Somehow, Rosa fought the horror and humiliation of the camp, on occasion coming dangerously close to death. In nursing the people trapped beside her, she helped others survive, but tragically she also watched them die, including a mother she had met before, with a similar story and a daughter the very same age. Her name was Edith Frank. Written immediately in the months after the war, Auschwitz – A Mother’s Story tells Rosa de Winter-Levy’s unique and heart-breaking personal story, from the atrocities of the camp to her journey out of hell. Powerful & affecting, it is the testimony of a mother, and the pain she will endure for the chance to hold her child again.
