For this, I survived. The story of an Italian Holocaust witness

1938. Eight-year-old Sami Modiano from the Jewish community of Rhodes, occupied by Mussolini's troops, discovers for the first time that he is not like everyone else: he is expelled from school and no longer allowed to study. A few years later, the island falls under Nazi control, and the community is deported to Birkenau, the most horrific Auschwitz death camp. The twelve-year-old boy will have to endure separation from his sister and witness the slow fading of his father. And he must survive in inhuman conditions... After surviving the "death march" and escaping from the camp, Sami finds himself on the front line with the Soviet army. He then makes his way to Italy on foot — only to realize that he no longer has a home: almost the entire Jewish community of Rhodes perished in the hell of the concentration camp. Sami realizes: he survived only to remember — and to speak on behalf of those whose voices have been silenced forever. "This is exactly why I need my book. To preserve the memory of those who perished in gas chambers and could not endure the icy nights in Auschwitz. Now I speak for them."