
Why is the title I Have Lived a Thousand Years such an apt description of Elli’s young life?Ģ. Unforgettable first hand accounts of terrible times, these two books are also ringing tributes to the human spirit.ġ. “A valuable addition to any Holocaust collection.” Winner of a Christopher Award and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, the book was followed by an equally acclaimed memoir of the author’s turbulent postwar years, My Bridges of Hope. “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. And with growing hope, fear of death becomes an actuality.What is death all about? What is life all about? The taste of liberation is becoming ever more tangible. We feel that the Allies have the upper hand. The frequency and intensity of the bombings heighten our anticipation.

We could see from our cell-block windows that the passage to the factory was blocked by masonry fragments, twisted metal parts, and other rubble-the remains of the factory annex leveled last night. Some debris! We knew there was extensive damage in the wake of yesterday’s Allied bombing.

And the name has stuck.Īt the Zählappell he announces that he needs forty girls to clear some debris in the factory yard. His large, buck teeth protrude above a pointed chin and, when he walks, his head bobs up and down on a ludicrously elongated neck, like a goat. This balky SS man looks like a goat and even his gait is like that of the foolish animal. To quickly assess the difficulty of the text, read a short excerpt: What reading level is I Have Lived a Thousand Years book?
