The poignant story of the most famous Italian prisoner of the Holocaust - about the horrors of Auschwitz, the loss of his entire family and wanderings in search of a new life

1938. Eight-year-old Sami Modiano from the Jewish community of Rhodes, occupied by Mussolini's troops, learns for the first time that he is not like everyone else: he is expelled from school and is no longer allowed to study. A few years later, the island comes under Nazi control and the community is deported to Birkenau, the worst Auschwitz death camp. A twelve-year-old boy must endure separation from his sister and watch his father slowly decline. And to survive in inhuman conditions...

Having survived the “death march” and escaping from the camp, Sami finds himself on the front line with the Soviet army. And then he gets to Italy on foot - only to realize that he no longer has a home: almost the entire Jewish community of Rhodes perished in the concentration camp hell... After years of wandering and hard work, he understands: the only way to come to terms with his past is to remember. And to speak on behalf of those whose voices have been silenced forever. “This is exactly what my book is for. To support the memory of those who perished in the gas chambers and could not withstand the icy nights in Auschwitz. Now I speak for them.”

––

““On that day, I seemed to have lost my innocence: in the morning I woke up as a child, and went to bed as a Jew.” This is how Holocaust survivor Sami Modiano remembers the day he was kicked out of school in Rhodes because of racial laws. This was only the first step towards horror. In fact, Sami was one of the 2,500 Jews from the Rhodes community deported to Birkenau. And one of the very few survivors. "Why me?" he asks again seventy years later. The only answer is to tell. So as not to forget." – Corriere de la SeraThe publishing layout of the book is saved in PDF A4 format.