A Mother's Promise

My name is Renee Salt. I am 94 years old, I am a witness to history. I am a survivor.

This is my attempt to make sense of a story which I can scarcely believe happened to me. Some of these pages are drenched in horror, but every so often a little light of hope and humanity shines through.

There is love, too - so much love.

Renee and her mother Sala never left each other's sides. From invasion to liberation, September 1939 to April 1945, as Renee was marched, herded and shoved from ghetto to camp, there was one constant. One hand which clutched hers - her mother's. Every day for six years, mother and daughter were tangled together in hell. From ghettos to slave labour, from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, they were a powerful source of solace and hope to one another.

Renee knows that she is only alive today because of her mother, that it was the sheer force and power of her love that gave them both something fragile but beautiful to cling to in an ugly, depraved world. It was her mother who hid her, lied to the SS, went right when she was directed left - whose small actions had lifesaving consequences. Now, for Renee, the need to share has finally overcome the desire to forget. This is a love letter to a mother eighty years in the making.