In September 1939, ten-year-old Renee Salt’s childhood ended. When German soldiers invaded Poland, she and her mother, Sala, began a six-year ordeal of ghettos, deportations, and imprisonment in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen.
Through starvation, cruelty, and the constant threat of death, Renee held fast to her mother’s hand. Sala’s staggering courage—defying SS guards, shielding her daughter from selections—kept them alive through the darkest days in Auschwitz’s history. But survival carried a devastating cost: though liberated in April 1945, Sala died soon after.
Now one of the oldest living Holocaust survivors, Renee recounts her story in Do Not Cry When I Die. This haunting memoir is not only a record of horror but a testament to a mother’s love—the force strong enough to save a child.
