The Daughter of Auschwitz. My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

Malcolm’s Acknowledgments

It has been a privilege to help Tova bring her incredible life story to such a potentially large international audience.

But it would have been a far more difficult task without the assistance and support of some wonderful people.

First, I must thank Milton Nieuwsma, journalist, television producer and author of Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah, for the most vital connection of all. Milt introduced me to Tova before I traveled to Auschwitz for the PBS NewsHour to cover the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation. Throughout the preparation of this book, Milt has been a rock of support, wisdom, and a great sounding board.

I am indebted to Therkel Straede, professor of contemporary history at the University of Southern Denmark, and a leading Scandinavian expert on the Holocaust. Therkel pointed me toward the most pertinent literature that enabled me to place Tova’s memories in a historical timeline. His attention to detail was critical in terms of fact-checking and correcting my initial errors.

I am grateful for the hand of friendship offered by Professor Yoel Yaari, a neuroscientist at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine in Jerusalem, whose mother, Bella Hazan, was a courier for the Jewish resistance in Poland during the Nazi occupation. She was tortured by the Gestapo, never gave up her secrets and survived two and a half years’ incarceration in Auschwitz. Yoel has been a font of critical information and I’m glad that he applied a brain specialist’s precision when analyzing my prose.

Pivotal components of this narrative would have been impossible without the perspective of Dr. Tony Bernard of Sydney, Australia, whose grandfather was a member of the Judenrat in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, and whose father, Dr. Henry Bernard, was a member of the Jewish police force in the ghetto at the same time as Machel Grossman. Before he died, Dr. Bernard sat down with Tony and recorded his life story. The resulting tussle with his conscience has been turned into a remarkable book called The Ghost Tattoo, published by Allen & Unwin in Australia.

Special thanks are due to Dr. Justyna Biernat of the Spaces of Memory Foundation, working to chronicle the dark past of Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Justyna furnished me with some key documents, maps and photographs, which brought much of the occupation back to life. The foundation relies on donations to survive, and Justyna would welcome contributions and purchases of her excellent short history, Black Silhouettes, at www.pasazepamieci.pl.

I’m grateful to my good friend Freddie Spence, who, among their diverse talents, is a trauma specialist. Freddie gave me some useful pointers about unlocking nuggets of information buried within the amygdala, the almond-shaped part of the brain where emotions are remembered, analyzed and attached to associations.

One of the most invaluable resources that helped us construct this memoir was the contribution to the Yizkor book of Machel Grossman, Tova’s father. For giving us permission to quote liberally from Machel’s writing, I am indebted to JewishGen, the global home of Jewish genealogy, which owns the translation. I am also grateful for the generosity of Kirsten Gradel, widow of Morris Gradel, a distinguished Yiddish and Hebrew linguist, who translated Machel’s chilling description of the liquidation of the Tomaszów Mazowiecki ghetto.

I honor the poet Henryka Łazowertówna for her poignant work “The Little Smuggler”, which is contained in The Song Will Survive Intact, an anthology of poems about Jews under German occupation, edited by Michael Borwicz. Tova and I are most grateful to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for giving us permission to use the English translation in Patricia Heberer’s book, Children During the Holocaust.

Thank you also to Natalia Jeziorna of the Mordechaj Gebirtig Memorial in Kraków for allowing us to quote the lyrics of his song “Reizel”. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Gebirtig’s songs became anthems of resistance. The Memorial is working to keep his legacy alive at www.mordechaj-gebirtig.pl.

From the PBS NewsHour, I’m indebted to Sara Just, executive producer, and Morgan Till, foreign editor, for generously allowing me the time and space to work on this important project.

Thanks to my former BBC colleagues Caroline Wyatt, Rob Watson and Mandy Stokes, for providing encouragement and insightful feedback.

Shani Friedman, Tova’s youngest son, has my eternal gratitude for devoting so much time, for helping us to get the book over the finishing line and for being such a fine arbitrator when creative differences occasionally arose.

I acknowledge that during the months I was engrossed in the book, my normally cheerful disposition occasionally deserted me. Let the record show my profound gratitude to my wife, Trine Villemann, and our son, Lukas, for their forbearance. I’m so fortunate to have Trine in my corner. She’s one of the best journalists I’ve ever met, and her incisive reading, notes and suggestions were invaluable when it came to sharpening up some of my woollier thoughts.

And to Tova, thank you for trusting me. Mazel tov.