Always Remember Your Name

Book excerpt: '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.' Gwen Strauss, author of The Nine On 28 March 1944, Italian 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 the sisters were among only 70 child survivors. Throughout their ordeal in the camp and the liberation of Auschwitz, their long journey from Poland to Czechoslovakia and finally to Lingfield House in Britain, they hung on to their promise to their mother to 'always remember your name'. They never forgot they were Tati and Andra Bucci, and it was this connection to their heritage that brought them miraculously back to their parents, years later and many countries away. The sisters overcame their trauma to live long lives, bearing witness as survivors of the Holocaust. 'Always Remember Your Name is heart-breaking and yet utterly uplifting, with the fierce bond of two sisters at its heart, who survived the Holocaust to bear witness, so that none of us will ever forget.' Heather Morris, international bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz '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.' Esther Freud, bestselling author of Hideous Kinky