“A gripping story,” School Library Journal added. “An exceptional story, exceptionally well told,” is how Publishers Weekly summed up I Have Lived a Thousand Years, Livia Bitton-Jackson’s memoir of coming of age in Nazi concentration camps.
My Bridges of Hope and I Have Lived a Thousand Years Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust, but what she doesn’t know is that this is only the beginning. Then she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity. First Elli can no longer attend school, have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet.īut these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. It wasn’t long ago that Elli led a normal life that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A remarkable memoir, I Have Lived a Thousand Years is a story of cruelty and suffering, but at the same time a story of hope, faith, perseverance, and love. So wonders thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann as she fights for her life in a Nazi concentration camp. What is death all about? What is life all about?
