Description
‘My name is Renee Salt. I am 94 years old, I am a witness to history. I am a survivor. This is my attempt to make sense of a story which I can scarcely believe happened to me. Some of these pages are drenched in horror, but every so often a little light of hope and humanity shines through. There is love, too – so much love.’
Renee and her mother Sala never left each other’s sides.
From invasion to liberation, September 1939 to April 1945, as Renee was marched from ghetto to camp, there was one constant. One hand that clutched hers – her mother’s. Every day for nearly six years, mother and daughter were bound together in hell. From Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen, they were a powerful source of solace and hope for one another.
The strength of Sala’s love gave them both something fragile yet beautiful to cling to in an ugly, depraved world. It was her mother who hid Renee, lied to the SS, went right when she was directed left – whose small actions had life-saving consequences. Now, for Renee, the need to share has finally overcome the desire to forget.
A Mother’s Promise is a love letter to a mother eighty years in the making.
‘Will stay with me for a long time… A beautiful account, so movingly told’ Anna Stuart
‘Powerful, poignant, and deeply important. A must-read’ Elizabeth Bellak
‘This is a story the world needs to know’ Madeline Martin
‘This book travels to the very heart of existence’ Joshua Levine
