Notes

iv, 142 pages :
illustrations, portraits.
Summary: Kor relates memories of life in the village of Portz, Transylvania (Romania), where she was raised on a large farm, 'never aware of the anti-Semitism [that pervaded the country] until 1940, when the Hungarian army came.' Six-year-old Eva and her identical twin, Miriam, the only Jewish children in their small mixed-grade classroom, suddenly found themselves taunted and beaten by once-friendly classmates. At 10 years of age, the twins and their family were forced to live among seven thousand other Jews in a fenced-in field, protected from the elements only by tents made of their own blankets and sheets and by the clothes on their backs. They were soon taken on a four-day train ride to Auschwitz, standing all the way, with no food or drink. There the sisters were 'selected' to be victims of Dr. Josef Mengele's medical 'research.' Eva's amazing fortitude and her desire to protect her sister helped her to survive a horrible disease brought on by an injection. Both twins endured a terrifying daylong separation during a forced march between camps; the remaining Auschwitz prisoners were liberated by Soviet soldiers, and the girls found a way to go home in search of family survivors.