A Daughter’s Gift of Love

This autobiographical novel recounts the tragedy of the Holocaust. One of the books on the subject most widely read in schools, it was written by Trudi Birger with the help of her editor, Jeffrey M. Green. Published in 1992, it has been translated across the world, and in Italy it won the Premio Andersen in 2005 in the over-12 category. We are reviewing this book on Holocaust Remembrance Day, as it offers a perspective of great emotional impact in the true story of a young girl. It is told in the first person in a simple but intense style that speaks directly to the heart. Trudi is torn from her comfortable life in Frankfurt, with its elegant tea dances, and thrust into the Kosvo ghetto. At sixteen, she is deported with her mother to the Stutthof concentration camp. For five years, she endures the horrors of the extermination camp—hunger, cold, humiliation, and the inhuman cruelty of the soldiers—escaping death at the very door of the cremation furnace. Yet amid all the horror, a force greater than despair sustains her: an unbreakable bond with her mother. Despite the nightmare she is living through, Trudi never stops hoping, dreaming, and believing in life, in a future. And she never stops dreaming: those steaming cups of hot chocolate that warmed and pampered her childhood return each night to the concentration camp, reminding her of the warmth and love of her family. It is this inner strength and the values instilled within her, that ultimately save her. The story does not end on the last page of the book, for Trudi Birger survived the horrors of the Shoah and, after the war, she settled in Jerusalem. Here, together with her large family, she devoted her life to helping the poorest children—regardless of ethnicity or religion—until she passed away in 2002.

Reading age: from 11 years

Ho sognato la cioccolata per anni
Trudi Birger
Pickwick, 2013