This is one holocaust memoir which does not stop at survival but goes on to describe the lasting effects upon those survivors of their persecution, betrayal and suffering. Trude Levi was inspired to set down her memories of her experiences as a young Hungarian girl deported to Buchenwald to work like a slave in a munitions factory. She says she had no sense of survival but was sustained by a strong sense of self-respect and a stubborn refusal to compromise. On her twenty-first birthday she collapsed from exhaustion on an infamous Death March and was left lying where she fell, not even worth a...

Teaching the Holocaust is a difficult and sensitive task. The facts and figures are readily available but it is the individual experiences that engage and interest pupils and allow them to understand the full implications of the Holocaust. Consequently, this work by Trude Levi should prove a useful teaching tool. Trude tells her story with little comment, allowing the terrible facts to speak for themselves. She describes without sentiment her experiences in Hungary under the Nazis, the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald and, finally, the death-march, during which she collapsed on...