Cage, The

From the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to the liberation of her concentration camp in 1945, the author chronicles an adolescence shaped by the horrors of the Holocaust but strengthened by the force of her own will. Sixteen year-old Riva recounts the suffering and persecution of her family under the Nazis, in a Polish ghetto, during deportation, and in a concentration camp. She was taken to the Auschwitz labor camp. Riva developed an infection where a doctor convinces the Nazi's that she needs care in a civilian hospital. There she escapes the horrors of war, but it is not clear if she lost any family members.