Lost Bread

Drawing on the remarkable events of her own life, renowned author and Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck tells the story of Ditke, a young Jewish girl living in Hungary during World War II. Like Bruck and her family, twelve-year-old Ditke, her parents, and her siblings are rounded up by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. Miraculously surviving the war with one of her sisters, but losing her parents and a brother, Ditke begins a tortuous journey--first back to Hungary, where she can no longer find a home for herself, then to Israel. There, she takes up all sorts of tenuous jobs before leaving with a dance troupe on a tour to Turkey, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1950s Italy she finds a home and a small measure of peace, and falls in love with a poet she will marry. Lost Bread closes with a letter to God--a testament in which Bruck expresses her rejection of hatred, her love for life, and her hope to never lose her memory or ability to continue speaking for all those who perished in the Nazi concentration camps. This letter, along with an interview printed in the Vatican newspaper, inspired Pope Francis to visit Bruck in her home where he thanked her for bearing witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust.