Always Remember Your Name: ‘Heartbreaking and utterly uplifting’ Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

A powerful and intensely moving true-life story of how two young sisters survived Auschwitz On 28 March 1944, sisters Tati (six) and Andra (four) were roused from their sleep and taken to Auschwitz, to the infamous Kinder Block, presided over by Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death. By the time Auschwitz was liberated, 230,000 children had been murdered, and Andra and Tati were among 70 or so survivors aged under ten. They were sent to Lingfield House in Surrey, England. Their mother had made them promise to 'always remember your names', and it was this promise which led to their miraculously being reunited with their parents. An unforgettable narrative of the power of sisterhood, and of how a mother's love can overcome the most impossible odds, the Bucci sisters' memoir tells the remarkable story of the children of Auschwitz and explores the sisters' long lives lived as survivors of the Holocaust.

About the Author :
Andra (b. 1939) and Tatiana Bucci (b. 1937) were born in Fiume, the daughters of a Catholic father and Jewish mother. They were deported to Auschwitz along with their mother, grandmother, aunt and a cousin. When the camp was liberated, in 1945, they were sent first to Czechoslovakia and later to England, where their parents finally tracked them down. They were reunited with their parents in 1946. Today, they bear witness in schools and at the camps.

Review :
A valuable record of what was suffered by surely some of our youngest survivors. Insightful and illuminating, the road to recovery - with its silences, loyalties, and self-examinations - is never what we might suppose. 'Told from the point of view of children, this rare story of the survival of two young sisters in Auschwitz, recounts how their mother managed miraculously to find them in the camp. She made them remember their names hoping against hope they would find each other after the war. The sisters, Andra and Tati, describe the silence that followed the war. No one spoke of what they had been through. Not their family, not their friends, not even their mother, who also survived. The sisters explain that the silence was protective and they credit their mother's courage for saving them. Many survivors could only speak of what they had been through late in life, lending their stories more urgency. These two sisters might be some of our final living first-hand witnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust. With this book, they break the silence and give us the immeasurable gift of their story.'