Helen Zipora “Zippi” Spitzer and David Wisnia knew that each moment they survived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s most notorious death camp, could be their last. Both had seen their share of death; both had experienced close calls. Zippi, a 23-year-old Slovakian with a passion for graphic design, was among the first Jews transported to Auschwitz in March 1942. David arrived nine months later, a 16-year-old Polish Jew who loved to sing. Both had lost their families and homes, and now they were imprisoned in squalid conditions for the “crime” of being Jewish.
A new book, Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story, chronicles the unlikely romance born within a world that cultivated human ashes. When she first arrived, Zippi was charged with lifting heavy stones. David was forced to carry emaciated bodies of dead prisoners. With grit, persistence and some luck, they survived. David sang to his captors, while Zippi drew them diagrams with camp statistics. Each became a “privileged prisoner,” awarded extra rations and safer jobs. While the camp death toll rose, Zippi found ways to resist the Nazis, ways to be in places where she shouldn’t have been. This is how it began, how Zippi found David and how two prisoners found a love that transcended the terror around them.
