This book is an important work in Holocaust literature and was originally published in Poland in 1967. Covering the years 1939-1945, it is the author's account of her experience growing up in the Warsaw ghetto and her eventual deportation to, imprisonment in, and survival of the Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Neustadt-Glewe camps. Since the old, the weak, and children were summarily executed by the Nazis in these camps, Mrs Birenbaum's survival and coming of age is all the more remarkable. Her story is told with simplicity and clarity and the new edition contains revisions made by the author to the original English translation, and is expanded with a new epilogue and postscripts that bring the story up to date and complete the circle of Mrs Birenbaum's experiences.

Born in Warsaw, Halina Birenbaum has lived in Israel since 1947. She is a writer, poet, and translator. She was ten years old when the war began. She lived through the Warsaw ghetto and the camps at Majdanek, Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and Neustadt-Glewe, where she was liberated in 1945. Her memoirs, which she was prompted to write by the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, are shocking, authentic, and candid.