Ave Maria in Auschwitz: The True Story of a Jewish Girl from Poland

Felicia Weingarten has saved poetic expressions of her life for us in this collection of short stories from WWII Poland and her experiences of surviving the Lodz ghetto and four concentration camps during the Holocaust. The stories are powerful not so much in how they speak to our minds but how they tear into our hearts. We are drawn into Felicia’s life vicariously at first, as though a stranger watching from the sidelines. But as each story unfolds, oftentimes with a twist at the end, we are suddenly faced with our own humanity, our own survival, our own actions and our own conscience as human beings. We are led into the darkness holding hands with an innocent, yet hopeful and courageous teenager; we emerge as reflective, perhaps even changed people, because of our human experience shared with Felicia. These are stories that transcend time and place and challenge us to be people of integrity, hope and commitment.