Resumo de I Have Lived A Thousand Years; Growing Up In The Holocaust

Born a Jewish girl in 1931, Livia Bitton-Jackson spent her early childhood years as Elli in a small farming town at the edge of the Carpathian foothills in Hungary. Her childhood was spent splashing in banks of the Danube, picnicing in the sun-drenched fields and dreaming of becoming a celebrated poet, one day in the distant future.

Little by little, the scourge of anti-semitism begins to makes its ugly imprint on her life as World War II polarizes Europe into those who will stand against Hitler's tyranny and those who will join it, caught up in its ever-strengthening whirlpool of death and destruction.
Elli starts to know the fear, degradation and helplessness that overtook millions of Jews. She describes in vivid detail the emotional upheaval of having to surrender her possessions, her rights and finally her status as a human in Nazi Europe.

She takes us with her on a nightmare journey. Firstly, she is impounded in a ghetto along with the other Jewish members of the town. Here she endures the excrutiating pain of separation from her father who is taken to a slave labour camp. She is never to see him again. The ghetto inhabitants are then transported to an unknown destination. Livia describes the insanity that greets her senses on arrival and the sickening realization that they have arrived at the dreaded Auschwitz.

Saved by her golden hair, a testimony of the perversion of the ideals that ruled that place, Livia takes us through the profound degradation, the unspeakable horror and fear that she shared along with millions of others whose stories can never be told.
Throughout it all, the strength and determination of the human spirit will inspire and awe the reader. Livia and her mother survived against unbelievable odds. Their love for one another is astounding. Their determination to survive is awe-inspiring.

The story is written with an immediacy which makes the experience palpable as though the reader were there experiencing it all with the author. It is nothing short of breathtaking. It is a tale that describes the height of human suffering but also the towering strength of the human will to survive. It documents stories of appalling human cruelty - stories that must be told if future generations are to understand the extent of the holocaust and the tremendous suffering inflicted on so many through the callous embracing of evil doctrine and quest for power. It also gives us deeply touching accounts of extraordinary love, kindness and sacrifice - an amazing tribute to the enduring goodness to which humankind can aspire.

Above all, Livia Bitton-Jackson paints a portrait for us of the titanic strength and endurance of the human spirit. Hers is a tale which teaches us to never give up hope, to never believe that goodness cannot win through in the end for those prepared to give their all.

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