"I was on the first Jewish transport to Auschwitz. I was number 1716." So writes Rena Gelissen in the brief prologue, in which she relates that the number was tattooed on her left forearm and was removed by a friendly American doctor some years later. A Pole, she was nineteen when the Germans invaded her village and with her younger sister, Danka, she was one of the earliest arrivals in the infamous camp. Against all odds, they survived together, even when marched in the dying days of the war to Ravensbruck, where they awoke one day in May 1945 to find that all the SS had absconded and that they were free. Both sisters married and now live in America. A harrowing story, plainly told.