A Journey Through Hell

Book excerpt: Hannah was but a young Jewish girl at the tender age of seventeen, when she and her younger sister got caught up in the horrors of Nazi Europe. She watched as her poor but lovely village was raped and destroyed by the invading Nazi war machine. In 1943 Hannah fled her village and her family never to see either again. She took her younger sister and escaped to hungry vowing to her mother that she would always protect and never leave her sister. After hiding underground I Budapest for several months, the Gestapo caught up with Hannah and her sister and they were sent to the death camps. Throughout Auschwitz, throughout a death march to Bergen-Belsen, among all the horrors and death of the gas chambers and the crematorium, this incredible young girl never broke the promise she gave to her mother. Hannah did much more than save her younger sisters life however. Through her own courage and cunning, Hannah managed, at the risk of certain death, to save hundreds of lives in Bergen-Belsen. When the British liberated Hannah on April fifteenth, nineteen forty-five, Hannah was near death from typhoid and pneumonia. She weighed a mere fifty-seven pounds. As Hannah lay dying with her sister, a British soldier gave her a chocolate bar. Hannah was too weak to raise her head to eat it, but she could still wave her hand and smile. Thanks. Hannah said. My God, what took you so long?