Born survivors

Resource Information

The work Born survivors represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Randwick City Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Born survivors

Statement of responsibility

Wendy Holden

Title variation

Born survivors

Title variation remainder

three young mothers and their extraordinary story of courage, defiance, and hope

Creator

• Holden, Wendy, 1961-

Author

• Holden, Wendy, 1961-

Subject

• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives
• Jewish women in the Holocaust -- Biography
• Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
• Holocaust survivors -- Biography

Genre

• Personal narratives
• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

Among millions of Holocaust victims sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 1944, Priska, Rachel, and Anka each passed through its infamous gates with a secret. They were newly pregnant, and facing an uncertain fate without their husbands. These young women were privately determined to hold on to all they had left: their lives, and those of their unborn babies. That the gas chambers ran out of Zyklon-B just after the babies were born, before they and their mothers could be exterminated, is just one of several miracles that allowed them all to survive and rebuild their lives after World War II. This book follows the mothers' incredible journey, first to Auschwitz, where they each came under the murderous scrutiny of Dr. Josef Mengele; then to a German slave labour camp where, half-starved and almost worked to death, they struggled to conceal their condition; and finally, as the Allies closed in, their hellish 17-day train journey with thousands of other prisoners to the Mauthausen death camp in Austria. Hundreds died along the way but the courage and kindness of strangers helped save these women and their children. Sixty-five years later, the three miracle babies met for the first time at Mauthausen for the anniversary of the liberation that ultimately saved them. United by their remarkable experiences of survival against all odds, they now consider each other siblings of the heart. This book brings all three stories together for the first time to mark their seventieth birthdays and the seventieth anniversary of the ending of the war. A heart-stopping account of how three mothers and their newborns fought to survive the Holocaust, this is also a life-affirming celebration of our capacity to care and to love amid inconceivable cruelty

Biography type

contains biographical information

Cataloging source

TRACS

Dewey number

940.5318

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps
• portraits

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Target audience

adult