Evening Edition --- Free Kindle Book!

There are three places I have visited that have hit me more than any other --- those things that make History more REAL than “story” ---

The first time I went to the Netherlands, I went with Lucy to Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. And I felt like I couldn’t breathe –seriously.

But even more than that, we visited the home of Corrie ten Boom in Haarlem…and saw “The Hiding Place”. And as we rode our bikes over the cobblestone streets I imagined all that happened there --- this was LIFE then. And Lucy’s parents, having lived through it, remembered it so well as if it were yesterday to them. It changed me in so many ways.

I’ve visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC twice ---and you almost have to give yourself a whole day there for it to sink in….just how much it encompassed---that whole couple of decades that some people think did not even happen! How could they say it didn’t happen? With all this documentation?

So when this book came up on the freebies over at Amazon, I had to get it, even though I do not really want to read it. It’s hard. It’s hard to read it and hard to realize just what happened, and that it could happen again ---could it ever happen again? To other peoples? I can’t think of it. My mind and heart don’t want to process it.

But through it all, I know it is imporant. These stories are important. Life changing. The few voices that were left are sharing and speaking, and I feel compelled to listen.

With Hanukkah beginning at sunset on Tuesday, December 20, 2011, and endings at sunset on Wednesday, December 28, 2011 I thought this might be a good time to read Rena’s Promise.

***Note*** This is free for Prime members..but remember, if you can't get it free, check it out of your library ---or buy it. With all the freebies we've posted, it's okay to BUY one once in a while, they can't all be free!

Rena’s Promise: Two Sisters in Auschwitz by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam is free today in the Amazon Kindle store, and has received an average user rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 14 customer reviews.

Category: Autobiography / History

Book’s description:

“I do not hate. To hate is to let Hitler win.” Rena Kornreich Gelissen

“The most important book of the modern age!” Neal Lavon, Voice of America

“The most historically accurate book ever written of the first transport of women into Auschwitz–the only book ever written by a survivor of that transport, who survived 3 years and 41 days in the camps.” Irena Strezlecka, Director of the Museum of Women at Auschwitz

On March 26, 1942, the first transport of women arrived in Auschwitz. Among the 999 young Jewish women was Rena Kornreich, the 716th woman numbered in camp. A few days later, her sister Danka arrives and so begins a trial of love and courage that will last 3 years and 41 days, from the beginning Auschwitz death camp to the end of the war.

Rena’s Promise stands out from other memoirs in mere length of time she spent in the camps. No other survivor from the first transport has ever written about her experience and what it meant to survive for so long as a peasant and a hard laborer who spent 10-12 hours a day making bricks, pushing lorries, sifting sand, performing cartwheels…. From her escape from Dr. Mengele’s experiment detail to her surreal meetings with SS woman Irma Grese, Rena tells a dynamic tale of courage and compassion that reminds us of the resiliency of the human spirit, and the power of people to help one another in unimaginable circumstances, be they Gentile or Jew, German or Pole, kapo or prisoner.

Used in secondary school Holocaust programs.

Recommended for Holocaust collections by the Library Journal.

Visit www.renaspromise.com to see photos and art.