I Have Lived a Thousand Years
Growing Up in the Holocaust
For Ages: 12 - 12
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This is the memoir of Elli Friedmann who was thirteen years old in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded Hungary. It describes, in intimate and excrutiating detail, how her world was shattered by their arrival. She tells what it was like to be suddenly forbidden to attend school, talk to neighbours, to forceably leave home and move to a ghetto, lose all privacy and almost starve. But worse was to come in Auschwitz concentration camp. She recounts what it was like to exist there as one of the few teenage inmates and the tiny but miraculous twists of fate that helped her survive against the odds. Although her story is heartbreaking, Elli's enduring hope, perseverance and strength throughout her ordeal make it an inspiring one. Readers will be moved by the intensity of Elli's spirit and her ability to overcome the nightmare that was her daily reality.
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- Simon Pulse |
- 224 pages |
- ISBN 9780689823954 |
- March 1999 |
- Grades 7 and up |
- Lexile 720L
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Book Reviews
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide to My Bridges of Hope and I Have Lived a Thousand Years By Livia Bitton-Jackson About the Books “An exceptional story, exceptionally well told,” is how Publishers Weekly summed up I Have Lived a Thousand Years, Livia Bitton-Jackson’s memoir of coming of age in Nazi concentration camps. “A gripping story,” School Library Journal added. “A valuable addition to any Holocaust collection.” Winner of a Christopher Award and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, the book was followed by an equally acclaimed memoir of the author’s turbulent postwar years, My Bridges of Hope. Unforgettable first hand accounts of terrible times, these two books are also ringing tributes to the human spirit. Discussion Topics 1.Why is the title I Have Lived a Thousand Years such an apt description of Elli’s young life? 2.“I don’t know if I am proud to be a Jew,” Elli admits early in I Have Lived a Thousand Years, when she is ordered by the Nazis to wear a six-pointed star on her clothing. “I had never thought about it.” How does her religious identification change and deepen as a result of her later experiences? 3.Discuss Elli’s evolving relationship with her mother. What was it like before the Nazis invaded Hungary? H
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