An Italian Jew recounts her experiences in the Nazi concentration camp, Birkenau, in April of 1944, combining a discussion of the camp's destruction of the feminine personality with images that reaffirm her humanity in the face of abomination. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly This unusually moving memoir of a young wife from Turin who survived 10 months in Birkenau and Auschwitz testifies to the particular way in which the experience ravaged women physically even while their patience and support of others helped them to endure. Parks's sensitive translation conveys an almost unbearable immediacy in the author's prose as she describes the squalor, starvation and torment of the camps against a background of the crematoriums' flaming stacks. A mother of two when she entered the camps, Tedeschi recalls how rare glimpses of a leafing birch, a snatch of song or rumors of Allied advances revived her often flagging will to live. Her husband died in the camps; after the liberation, she went on to pursue a teaching career. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This compelling look at life in a German concentration camp at the end of World War II describes in graphic detail its deliberate, dehumanizing brutality. When the author arrived at Birkenau in April 1944, the prisoners believed the war would be over in two or three months; in fact, they would struggle to survive the starvation diet and hard, meaningless labor for another year. Common suffering did not produce unity, however: the prisoners were divided among themselves by national, ethnic, and religious prejudices. This intensely personal narrative, complementing works such as Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl , will be a valuable addition to any collection containing Holocaust material. - Robert A. Curtis, Taylor Memorial P.L., Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.