Two Rings

Trapped in Poland in 1941, like many Jews, Millie Werber went from the Warsaw Ghetto to slave labor in an armaments factory, survived Auschwitz, and toiled in a second factory until liberation came on April 1, 1945. She faced death many times but lived to marry a good man and fellow survivor. Meanwhile, she concealed a photograph in her closet and carried a secret in her heart. Many years later, Millie began telling her story to writer Eve Keller. Together, the two women rediscovered the teenage girl Millie had been during the war-and the man to whom she was married for a few brief months. Betrayed by a fellow Jewish guard, he died, leaving Millie with their wedding rings and a single photograph taken on their wedding day. Nothing else remained to prove that he ever existed. Millie never told her family about him, but she never abandoned his memory. A worthy addition to the bestselling tradition of Holocaust coming-of-age memoirs, this is a spare, unsentimental, and indelibly poignant tale of a history reclaimed.