A Story of Survival, Resilience, and the Promise of Family

In 2019, Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, received an email from a family in Israel. The email was from the son and daughter-in-law of one of three Jewish sisters who lived in the same town as Gita Fuhrmannova, the future wife of Lale Sokolov, whose story Morris told in her novel. The sisters were on the same train to Auschwitz from eastern Slovakia in 1942 as Gita and lived in Block 29 at the concentration camp with her.

Cibi, Magda, and Livia. The sisters shared their story of survival with Morris, and she recorded it in her third novel, Three Sisters.

One of the most moving moments Morris had with Livia was when she asked Morris to see a handmade crocheted lace doily made by her mother. The doily was rescued from their home in Slovakia by a neighbor after the family was deported to Auschwitz. Livia told Morris that she looks at the doily and the photo of her parents on her bedside table each night.

Morris also shared with me her memories of one of the last times the sisters were together before Cibi's death. The sisters found a quiet place to sit, away from their husbands, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Cibi was in a pensive mood and needed the closeness of Magda and Livia.

"We kept our promise to papa, didn't we?" Cibi said. She was referring to the promise the three girls had made to their father in 1929, the day before he died – to stay together always and never let anyone separate them.

Yet for Livia and, I imagine, for so many of the other survivors still with us, there is the daily shadow of all that was endured. Yes, Livia laughs and cries, plays with her great grandchildren, gives words of wisdom to her grandchildren, insists to her children that she is quite capable of looking after herself. And every night she goes to sleep in Birkenau.