THIS HAS HAPPENED: AN ITALIAN FAMILY IN AUSCHWITZ; TRANS. BY ANN GOLDSTEIN

Piera Sonnino recounts her family's deportation to Auschwitz in 1944, describing the horrors she and her family faced and the courage and faith that helped them through their time in the concentration camps. Abstract: Piera Sonnino recounts her family's deportation to Auschwitz in 1944, describing the horrors she and her family faced and the courage and faith that helped them through their time in the concentration camps

In the vein of Primo Levi's bestseller Survival in Auschwitz comes this rare and stark testimonial of an Italian woman who survived the Nazi concentration camps

The New Yorker

Sonnino’s story of her Genoese Jewish family’s deportation to Auschwitz was published by her daughters in 2002, in response to an Italian weekly’s call for readers’ memories. Born in 1922, Sonnino describes the family’s slow decline from middle-class respectability to “dignified poverty” (a situation that the 1938 racial laws made irreparable) and the proud isolation that forged a tight family unit, thereby making individual escapes inconceivable. The uniquely devastating quality of this book comes from the Old World refinement embodied by Sonnino’s parents and the systematic degradations their children see them endure. Sonnino also displays a propensity to dwell on human kindness. Although her family is betrayed by a fellow-Italian, she takes care to mention all who offer assistance along the way, even the elderly German woman who gives hot tea to her fainting sister.

Five years after her return home from Auschwitz, Piera Sonnino found the courage to tell the story of the extermination of her parents, three brothers, and two sisters by the Nazis. Discovered in 2005 in Italy and first published in English in 2006, this poignant and extraordinarily well-written account is strikingly accurate in bringing to life the methodical and relentless erosion of the freedoms and human dignity of the Italian Jews, from Mussolini's racial laws of 1938 to the institutionalized horror of Auschwitz. Through Sonnino's words, memory has the power to disarm these unspeakable evils, in This Has Happened. Five years after her return home from Auschwitz, Piera Sonnino found the courage to tell the story of the extermination of her parents, three brothers, and two sisters by the Nazis. Discovered in 2005 in Italy and first published in English in 2006, this poignant and extraordinarily well-written account is strikingly accurate in bringing to life the methodical and relentless erosion of the freedoms and human dignity of the Italian Jews, from Mussolini's racial laws of 1938 to the institutionalized horror of Auschwitz. Through Sonnino's words, memory has the power to disarm these unspeakable evils, in This Has Happened . Five years after her return home from Auschwitz, Piera Sonnino found the courage to tell the story of the extermination of her parents, three brothers, and two sisters by the Nazis. Discovered one year ago in Italy and never before published in English, this poignant and extraordinarily well-written account is strikingly accurate in bringing to life the methodical and relentless erosion of the freedoms and human dignity of the Italian Jews, from Mussolini's racial laws of 1938 to the institutionalized horror of Auschwitz. Through Sonnino's words, memory has the power to disarm these unspeakable evils.