Author(s): Lidia Maksymowicz; Paolo Luigi Rodari (As told to); His Holiness Pope Francis (Foreword by)

Biographies

The heartbreaking, inspiring and ultimately hopeful true story of a young girl sent to Auschwitz, who survived the Mengele's pseudo-medical experiments. With a foreword by His Holiness Pope Francis.

Lidia Maksymowicz was just three years old when she arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau with her mother, grandparents, and foster brother. They were from Belarus, their "crime" that they supported the partisan resistance to Nazi occupation. Once there, Lidia was picked by Dr Josef Mengele for his experiments and sent to the children's block. It was here that she survived eighteen months of hell. Injected with infectious diseases, desperately malnourished, she came close to death. Her mother - who risked her life to secretly visit Lidia - was her only tie to humanity.

By the time Birkenau was liberated her family had disappeared. Even her mother was presumed dead. Lidia was adopted by a woman from the nearby town of Oswiecim. Too traumatized to feel emotion, she was not an easy child to care for but she came to love her adoptive mother and her new home. Then, in 1962, she discovered that her birth parents were still alive. They lived in the USSR. And they wanted her back. Lidia was faced with an agonizing choice.

Powerful, moving, and hopeful, in A Little Girl in Auschwitz, Lidia comes to terms with the past and finds the strength to share her story. Above all, she refuses to hate those who hurt her, saying, "Hate only brings more hate. Love, on the other hand, has the power to redeem."

Previously published as The Little Girl Who Could Not Cry.