The Redhead of Auschwitz. A True Story

by Nechama Birnbaum

“You’ve got to be careful girls,” she would say. “You never, ever really know who the real person is. People are good at pretending. They are sweet and nice and then when they don’t need you anymore, who knows what they can do. You never actually know a person all the way. People know how to dress their souls up, put some makeup on. They can act polite when everyone is looking but you can never be sure.”

you have to believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy,”

“Think of it as the greatest gift of all. You don’t wait to see what kind of life you lived or what kind of person you became, you choose for yourself no matter what you are going through. You don’t wait for life to happen to you, you happen to life. With every move you make you can choose to make it what you want, what you believe in, even if it is the harder choice.”

Choose life, my Rosie, choose life.”

We are alive again and the flowers tell us there is a life still waiting for us.

Forgiveness belongs to the six million Jews who gasped for air, who were shot into mass graves, who were shot into rivers, who were abused, violated, and embarrassed—it is their choice to forgive, but they are forever silenced. While they cannot speak, we can speak for them.

The greatest revenge we can inflict is to have tolerance and kindness for ALL peoples, all those that Hitler so strongly stood against. Hitler, who did not kill six million Jews by himself.

Evil does not only happen when a person is abnormally bad. Evil happens when good people do not see the good in other people. Evil happens when we judge each other. Evil happens when we put ourselves higher than others. Evil happ...

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” My grandmother wants you to know what she went through so you can change the way our future looks. She wants you to know you can never let this happen again. She wants you to know that it doesn’t matter what race you are, or the color of your skin, or what religion you practice; we are all one. She wants you to treat others with respect and she wants you to stand up for those who are being treated unjustly, no matter who they are. She wants you to remember, so you can stand up for peace.