They eat worm-infested food and suffer whippings and verbal assaults. The women work for hours on a hilltop in the sun, developing blisters and sores. Ten days after arriving, guards select Bitton-Jackson and her mother for transport to Plaszow, a labor camp. Bitton-Jackson reunites with an aunt and two cousins, but the reunion is short-lived. Inmates are forced to shave their hair, and authorities send them through public showers, after which they give the women prison dresses and send them to their barracks. He sends her with her mother to the group fit for work and tells her she is now sixteen years old. Bitton-Jackson is thirteen, but her blond hair captures the attention of Dr. The officers separate women sixteen and older who are fit for work from elderly or infirm women and mothers with young children. Bitton-Jackson’s brother, Bubiis sent with the men.
At Auschwitz, SS officers separate the men from the women and children. The authorities then burn them in a public bonfire, after which they deliver the women, children, and elderly to the Nazis, who transport them to Auschwitz on windowless, airless cattle cars. Shortly after, Hungarian authorities order the remaining ghetto residents to surrender books and personal documents. It is in such a ghetto that Bitton-Jackson experiences an awakening of her Jewish identity.Īfter a few weeks in the ghetto, her father receives a summons to report for transport to a labor camp.
Jew are forbidden from appearing in public, their valuables are confiscated, and, ultimately, they are deported to ghettoes. Authorities require Jewish residents to wear a yellow star and paint this same star on their houses. The German occupation of 1944 intensifies the persecution of Jews. They’ve confiscated her father’s business and staged raids in Jewish households. Since the Hungarian occupation of her region, authorities have subtly persecuted Jewish residents.
Electricity and cars are rare, and most residents live by nature’s rhythms. Life in her small farming community revolves around the Danube River.
Her message to future generations is to fight intolerance and prejudice and never give up.īitton-Jackson’s story begins in 1943, when she is twelve years old, and nurtures dreams of becoming a celebrated poet. Fifty years later, Bitton-Jackson returns to Germany for a Holocaust remembrance ceremony. I Have Lived a Thousand Years received a Christopher Award, presented to writers, producers and directors that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” The book chronicles Bitton-Jackson’s experiences before and during the Holocaust, from the days leading up to the German occupation through her liberation by American troops.
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