BORN SURVIVORS Paperback – April 18, 2016

A very informative account of a horrific time in history. Well written and documented. I would recommend this to any one interested in the concentration camps and life in them.

I am an avid book reviewer for Amazon.com. I have read many books in my life of this holocaust, but never a book so intense--having me feel as though I was in all the settings and partaking in the inhumane injustice with these people. It really hit home....the hatred which I have for Hitler and for the Nazi party, whom participated in his 'extermination program', by occupying just one too many European countries. And I hate to think of it as an 'extermination', as mankind should not have that opportunity!!So many accountable Nazi's (for their individual participation in these atrocities) should have been killed on the spot...ask questions later. And I am not a death penalty person! I am a Catholic. And I do so hope that they all are all rotting in hell for their war crimes, which were beyond unimaginable.It was extremely educational but the most emotional book I've ever read as I learned about so many personal stories that have never been told of before. This is such a historic genocide. And for those of us who read this particular book and from reading other reviews, I found that we all are able to feel that of the unbearable suffering and the unspeakable living conditions and displacements everywhere. We witnessed all types of death...all because one sociopath was determined to create a nation of one breed by implementing racial indifference throughout as many European countries as he couple occupy, by the way of a genocide. Peaceful and lawful Jews had but no choice to endure countless cruel and ruthless situations, and in so many inhumane environments.I guess I can summarize my review by saying this: Other 5 star reviewers had stories to say about their American dad's service to our country...going into these Nazi occupied European countries, freeing so many important, but lifeless people. Thank God for their reviews about their dad's participation, due to their stories of being there to free and do what they could for the prisoners. These American soldiers went beyond all they could to help the people who survived the pits of hell. Let us pray for them, but so importantly for all those who were worked to death, gassed, shot to death, made to go through unbearable ghetto conditions, and having to wear a Jewish star, as if it was an 'inhumane symbol' for the Jewish people to wear in the countries of which Hitler occupied. Thankfully, we allies went in and ended his all too far progressed program. Now, the survivors and their children can respect the Star of David all the more!To the author, Wendy Holden....you did the most outstanding job at putting us readers in all of the ungodly environments and circumstances which millions of innocent people were made to go into, as well as your three central characters. Your book was hard to read, but it is a MUST READ.

I guess I expected it to be a more story-like about the Holocaust experiences of 3 women who became mothers during their time in the horrid concentration camps. It was a lot more than that. It grabs you right off with the personal experiences each woman experienced and photos of them and their husbands, followed by camp photos, train railways and boxcars, and later the children they birthed. Then come the actual live-account descriptions of their life during that time. It's very graphic and very descriptive. So it becomes more real-life historical. The author conferred with all 3 families and really did her homework on research, so you have no doubt it was real. These 3 women represented what fortitude and unknown strength mother-to-be/mothers possess when they know they MUST survive for the children and the hope that their husbands actually made it through the Holocaust, as well. The dream of something and someone (be it their husbands and/or families) to go home to. BE PREPARED - rough read!

There are no words to describe the heartbreak these women and millions of others endured. I now truly understand what so many endured during their captivity and I pray it never happens again. Truly this book enlightened me and made me realize how blessed I am.

I had to wait a few days to compose my review for this book, as I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to put into words what I felt when I read it. I've read a lot of WWII non-fiction and historical fiction lately; it is an era that both fascinates and repulses me. Out of all the books I have read in this genre so far, this one shocked me the most. This book covers a topic that most people probably do not think about when it comes to the concentration camps in and around Germany - women who were pregnant, or even more mind-boggling, BECAME pregnant while in the camps. This book is the story of three of those women, and it is both heartbreaking and mind-blowing. Holden does a really good job of showing the mindset of many Jews during the early years of the war, when for some life was just becoming inconvenient, perhaps a little strange, but never dreaming of the atrocities the next few years would bring. The background for each woman's own portion of the book gives a wonderful insight into the lives of Jewish families at the beginning of the war, and this really connects the reader to each of them, knowing what is at stake for each character. It highlights the unexpected hope that these women had, for themselves and their futures, as all three of them actively chose to bring a child into a very tumultuous world. The story stems from that hope, and traverses a journey to keep that hope alive, along with the children growing inside their mother's increasingly ravaged bodies. Graphic in detail, I squirmed through several parts, mostly the descriptions of the literally inhumane conditions that these women lived through. The detail of the housing and survival conditions that these women and others around them managed to live through is staggering. In fact, the only thing that made me continue reading the book at some points was the knowledge that the babies they each carried survived (this is not a spoiler, for this is how the book came to be). It is unimaginable the strength that these women had, to carry a child into a hellscape such as these children were born into. It is not a book for everyone, if you are squeamish or find it hard to read accounts of torture or violent mistreatment, this will be a hard one to get through. But, it is also important to acknowledge that it happened, and if we suffer as readers far removed from the actual events, maybe we would have the smallest inkling of what it was really like to experience the Holocaust. During a time of political and ethnic unrest, the least we can do is read their story. The most we can do is tell others, so that we can try to assure our children that history will not repeat itself.

An excellent, well researched, and beautifully written account of the lives of three Jewish families and what became of their survivors after WWII. It is focused on young women who became pregnant and gave birth at concentration camps shortly before the liberation.A strong reminder of the many lives that were lost and the ones that are making sure humanity does not forget what happened. Everyone should read it.

A heart rending account of the atrocities the Jews had to face in concentration camps, this book has three pregnant women, who miraculously carry their pregnancies full term and what is more their babies survive. The book gives details of the horrid conditions in the camps. The book kept me on tenterhooks. These were real people, not fictional characters, and I was hoping they would succeed against the inhumanity of the Nazis. And they did! It is one of the most detailed accounts of conditions in concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz- Birkenau

Beautifully researched with great sensitivity. One of the most moving books I've read on the Holocaust Should be as cool text along with Ellie weisel's "night"

Duro pero muy buen libro.Sin duda uno de los mejores libros que he leído.Basado en hechos reales.Un 10.

This is the story of how three young women – Anka, Rachel and Priska – hid their pregnancies from Dr Josef Mengele on the ramp at Auschwitz, and went on to suffer in the concentration camps and give birth to their babies just before Liberation in April 1945. All three of those babies then met for the first time at the age of 65 and became very close because of the astonishing similarity of circumstances in which they had been born.I’ve read several books about and by Holocaust survivors, and yet each time I read the detailed account of an individual’s experiences I feel the horror afresh. This account, brilliantly told by Wendy Holden, spares none of the terrible details; the one thing that keeps you going, as the reader, through the grotesque inhumanity of the Nazis, is the knowledge that “this story is only being told because the three women and their babies survived.”As survivor Esther Bauer put it: “The first twenty years we couldn’t talk about it. For the next twenty years no-one wanted to hear about it. Only in the next twenty years did people start asking questions.”When reading these books I have two immediate responses. One is to try to imagine how I would have coped with those kind of circumstances, and how I would have behaved. The second response is always to ask what this tells us about the nature of human beings, of good and evil, hope and despair.This time, I had the following thought: The essential requirement for “hope” seems to be “macro” thinking. For many of us, when life’s “normal” we live our little lives with our small goals. But when Force Majeure intervenes, throwing us into a survival situation – be that earthquake, tsunami, terrorist atrocity, or Nazi Holocaust – our goals shift from “micro” thinking to “macro” thinking, at the point where lives and hopes and dreams are torn apart – a shift takes place. A new goal replaces the old: to survive; or to know that your story might be known in the future. And these three women would have hoped that their as yet unborn babies would be the living embodiment of that.