Three Sisters: A story of love and survival in Auschwitz
By Rocio Otoya
Sydney, Australia, Nov 10 (EFE) .- Author of the international bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris ,has released a new novel based on a true Holocaust story of love and survival.
Titled ‘Three Sisters,’ the book tells the story of the real-life Meller sisters, Cibi, Magda and Livia, who at the respective ages of 19, 17 and 15, were forced to leave their home in the Slovakian city of Vranov nad Toplou after they were ordered to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
The New Zealand novelist learned about the story of the sisters, currently living in Israel, when they reached out to her after they realized they had met Lale, the protagonist of The Tattooist of Auschwitz who tattooed them at the concentration camp.
“When I first went to meet with them in Israel, they said they wanted to talk to me about Lale and Gita (the tattoo artist’s wife). It was only when I started spending time with them on my first visit that I started hearing their story and started seeing they are true and, like every Holocaust survivor, had an incredible story,” Morris says.
One of the most heartbreaking moments the Meller sisters had to experience was depicted in the book; when they were reunited with their mother and grandfather shortly before they were executed by the Nazis.
“That was the hardest thing to write, the hardest thing for me to talk about because that part of their pain did come and land on me. You cannot sit with 95- and 97-year-olds and hear that and not have it affect you for the rest of your life,” Morris adds.
The Australian-based writer explained that when Magda and Livia told her about this story, she felt how they still to this day carry the heartbreaking pain of losing their mother.
But this was not the only painful experience they went through. These sisters are not only marked by tattoos but also by the horror of living under the systematic brutality of the Nazis in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
What all survivors of the Holocaust share is that they continue to live with the torment for years after.
