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Acknowledgments
Gratitude seems a small word for such a powerful emotion and barely grasps the depth of acknowledgment I owe to the families who entrusted their mothers’, cousins’, and aunts’ stories to me. I am sincerely grateful to them for giving me this honor. When I met Rena Kornreich Gelissen in 1992, I had no idea that twenty-five years later I would meet Adela Gross’s family, discover the Benovicova sisters’ names, or dare to write another Holocaust book.
This book would never have been written without Edith Grosman. Her courage to return to the past and record her account of survival on film, as well as countless personal interviews, is the force behind this research and this story. Tireless at ninety-five years of age and with a brain that is astutely sharp, Edith bore my questions and connected the dots between many of the girls that she knew in camp. I am eternally grateful to have shared so many hours of deep conversations filled with laughter, tears, and singing. Thank you for allowing me into your life and accepting me into your home and your family. While I never met Edith’s husband, Ladislav Grosman, I would like to thank Laco for the novels he wrote about his hometown, which infuse the beginning of this narrative with their spirit.
It was Adela Gross’s story, and the discovery of her cousin, Lou, that first started me on this journey in 2012. Thanks go to Lou’s wife, Joan, for reading Rena’S Promise, finding Adela’s story, and getting in touch with me. If God’s hand was in any of this, it was that moment when we connected, and Lou and the Gross family learned what happened to their beautiful redheaded cousin, seventy years after she disappeared.
My heartfelt gratitude to Ivan Jarny, who became my personal research assistant at ninety-two years of age and continued helping me for the next three years. I had hoped to find a young student, but instead found an old one who was absolutely tireless in his tenacious search for truth at his local Jewish Holocaust Center in Melbourne, Australia, which helped us unravel some of the more confusing bits of this history, especially around Dr. Gejza Konka. Ivan’s personal papers and Giora Amir’s memoir are important acts of witness and are among the most powerful resources I found for this book.
In 2016, I was fortunate to meet Dr. Pavol Mešan and his assistant, the brilliant and exceedingly helpful Dr. Stanislava Šikulová of the Múzeum židovskej kultúry v Bratislave (Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava). Your combined knowledge and insight were essential as I untangled the web of deceit and betrayal, complicated political manuverings, government laws, codices, and of course the origins of the list. Thank you for inviting me to the anniversary events and for all you do every year in Poprad to make sure the girls are remembered, respected, and honored.
Serendipity has played a part in every corner of the creation of this book. Writing it would never have been possible if I had not met my litearary agent, Scott Mendel, at the five hundredth anniversary of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, Italy, and he had not shown interest in the story. A few years later, my wonderful editor, Michaela Hamilton, was on board with the whole publishing family at Kensington’s Citadel Press to become the champions of this story and the girls. Thank you to my foreign rights team and publicity departments for helping bring this story to the world. To Arthur Maisel, thank you for your painstaking attention to detail and help throughout the production phase of this book.
In memory of Irena Strzelecka and her work on the women’s camp in Auschwitz, I am grateful for all she did in compiling the essays in The Tragedy of the Jews of Slovakia, and for what Rena and I were able to contribute. Dr. Ivan Kamenec may have forwarded me to the historians Jan Hlavinka and Mi-chala Lôniková, but I am deeply grateful to him for his early research into the first transports, which provided me a road map to the documents I needed to find in the Slovak National Archives. I am also grateful for comprehensive multivolume catalogues of the Ministry of the Interior and court documents from Tiso’s government, compiled by Professor Eduard Nižanský from Department of General History at Comenius University in Bratislava and his students, which I accessed at the Weiner Library and which lead me to the historical documents I needed to find in the Slovak National Archives. To Dr. Marek Púik, who handed me box after box at the Archives, thank you for your patience and occasional translation assistance. I am rarely happier than when I am amid stacks of boxes and old papers. It was in those stacks that I found the elusive Gejza Konka’s signature time and again.
My deepest thanks to the researchers and archivists at Auschwitz-Birkenau Pastwowe Muzeum: Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, who welcomed me into his office in 2012 and personally showed me places not on any public tour of Auschwitz that would later inform this book; to Doreta Nycz, who first brought me into Block 10; Wanda Hutny, who in 2017 brought the survivors’ children I was traveling with into Block 10, where their mothers had first been kept in Auschwitz; and Magdalena Gabry and Katarzyna Kolonko for helping us film on-site at the museum.
At the USC Shoah Foundation, I would like to thank Crispin Brooks, my first contact in 2012, who searched the database for survivors of the first transport’s recorded testimonies and gave me an initial list of names, with twenty-two women on it, and photographs of them as girls. That list was the seed that germinated into this book. Thank you also to Georgiana Gomez, the access supervisor for the USC Visual Archive, who helped me wade through testimony and photograph permissions, so you, dear reader, could see the girls, as well. I am additionally grateful for all the assistance the archivists at Yad Vashem have given me over the years: Reut Golani, Marisa Fine, and to Alla Kucher-enko, for showing Orna and her son, Gideon, the original list. Thanks also to Liliya Meyerovich at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for fielding my many queries and always responding quickly. I am also exceedingly appreciative to Simon Bentley, the director of Yad Vashem UK, for his abundant goodwill, support, and his wonderful staff.
None of the people involved in this project were more important than the actual survivors, their children, their witnesses, and the family members of nonsurvivors. It was through them that I uncovered many of these untold stories and am probably still uncovering them at this printing. You are a part of my family and my heart in such a deep way, I cannot suitably express my respect and love for you all.
