Buchenwald survivors Ilona and Henia Karmel were seventeen and twenty years old when they entered the Nazi labor camps from the Krak籀w ghetto. These remarkable poems were written during that
time. The sisters wrote the poems on worksheets stolen from the factories where they worked by day and hid them in their clothing. During what she thought were the last days of her life, Henia
entrusted the poems to a cousin who happened to pass her in the forced march at the end of the war. The cousin gave them to Henia's husband in Krak籀w, who would not locate and reunite with his
wife for another six months.
This is the first English publication of these extraordinary poems. Fanny Howe's deft adaptations preserve their freshness and innocence while making them entirely compelling. They are
presented with a biographical introduction that conveys the powerful story of the sisters' survival from capture to freedom in 1946.
