Echoes from the Holocaust: A Memoir

Mira Kimmelman, ne� Ryzke, was born in Zoppot, a suburb of the prosperous port city of Danzig, Poland, in 1933. In the face of the changing political climate, as many friends and neighbors emigrated, her father chose to remain. With the arrival of the Germans and the capitulation of Poland in 1939, it was too late; the fate of the Ryzke family was sealed. From the Warsaw to the Tomaszow ghettos, through a chain of concentration camps -- Blizen-Majdanek to Auschwiz-Hindenberg to the liberation at Bergen-Belsen, Mira and her father survived; her mother was killed at Treblinka while her beloved brother Benno succumbed at Mauthausen. In all, 20 members of her immediate family perished. Her story is told simply and eloquently. Her final admonition to this and future generations, that such brutality should never again happen, is, "Teach it, tell it, read it."