Having read so many books about the Holocaust and the camps you think you have heard everything, then a book comes along and blows you away, and tells you things you have never heard before. So, actually, what — we need to be much more sort of reactive, and to knock things on the head before they really start, because trouble can really begin very quickly. Günther Maria Halmer took on the role of Höss in the 1988-89 American television miniseries War and Remembrance. These experiences are so beyond what I can comprehend, reading her story, her words as she describes what life was like for her. But one of the things that was hard for me to read, Tova Friedman, was the impossible choices that the Germans imposed on the Jewish people, the decision your mother had to make when there was a point when the Nazis were choosing which families survived and which didn't.

Somehow one of the interrogators probably thought that I had used it to constantly whip the prisoners. Tova lived the rest of her life between the brand new state of Israel and America helping others in so many ways.In an unstable world with the far right in the ascendance and totalitarian governments in so many places we must all address these questions before it is too late and the unthinkable becomes reality once again. I can only remember the figures involved in the larger actions, which were repeated to me by Eichmann or his deputies. Tova said that it was common for survivors to feel guilty for having escaped death when their family and friends perished. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction.

As a mother, this story brought me to tears multiple times as I couldn’t even imagine being in this situation. Wounded three times and a victim of malaria, he was awarded the Iron Crescent, the Iron Cross first and second class and other decorations. In 1942, Höss had sexual relations with a political prisoner at Auschwitz named Eleonore Hodys [47] (or Nora Mattaliano-Hodys). Die 4jährige Tova musste mit ihren Eltern in solch ein Vernichtungslager und mit 6 kam sie nach Auschwitz-Birkenau. His no-nonsense prose brings Tova Friedman’s memories to life in a very readable and unsentimental way.Even Höss' expanded facility could not handle the huge number of victims' corpses, and the camp staff were obliged to dispose of thousands of bodies by burning them in open pits.

We owe it to the people who survived and to the people that perished at the hands of these evil monsters to keep shining a light on the injustice.But then I thought of the enormity of what the author had endured, and what it took for her to survive and distill all those memories into a book, and I decided that reading a 300-page book was a small commitment to make on my part. Brigitte had an extraordinary childhood, moving from the farm to one concentration camp after another as her father scaled the ranks of the SS: Dachau from ages 1 through 5; Sachsenhausen from 5 to 7; and from 7 to 11, in perhaps the most notorious death camp, Auschwitz.

The watchword “Never Again” should be more than a catchphrase; it must serve as a promise fulfilled, for the sake of our children and the future generations to follow.

Tova Friedman, Co-Author, "The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope": Well, he was talking to me. In all of the discussions, Höss is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it never would have occurred to him if somebody hadn't asked him. In a powerfully written book, THE DAUGHTER OF AUSCHWITZ (Hanover Square Press 2022), Tova Friedman recounts firsthand experiences of how she struggled to survive the most heinous crime of history, the Holocaust.