When the Nazis seize Vienna, a young Margit "Gittie" Zsupnyik watches her world collapse piece by piece—her father forced onto a transport bound for England, her family starved, their little farm stolen, and even her beloved dog dragged away by soldiers. What remains is a fragile circle of a mother whose courage never breaks, grandparents whose resilience holds the family together, and Uncle Max—the brilliant guardian angel fighting desperately to protect them all. Deported to the Theresienstadt camp in the garrison town of Terezin, Gittie enters the infamous "model ghetto" where thousands of Jewish children studied, painted, and sang...before being sent to extermination camps like Auschwitz. But Gittie is not allowed to play with the other children. Her family keeps her hidden and she lives in the shadows of the camp's horror. She is the loneliest child in Terezin. And that is why she survives. Drawing on the clarity and emotion of childhood memory, The Loneliest Child in Terezin is a story of hope and mourning. It is a memoir that preserves one family's acts of love amid unimaginable cruelty and ensures that those members who lost their lives—whose final resting places remain unknown and unmarked to this day —will never be forgotten.
Marge Rich is the mother of my friend from college. She told me that her mom was working on her story. A few days ago she let me know it’s available.
Read it, you won’t be able to stop…it’s not just events that we read about in school from textbooks, Marge lived this, and her daughter encouraged her to tell her story.