Desperation

When Lydia Rychner-Reich took her first breath in 1927, no one could have predicted the horrors she would face in her life. Born just before the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, she personally experienced the atrocities of the time and shares them in this memoir for the whole world.

In Desperation, Lydia recounts the harrowing story of her life under Nazi rule. The torment began in 1938 when, at the age of eleven, the Nazis deported Lydia and her family to Poland, where they struggled daily to survive in a Jewish ghetto. In 1943, the Nazis tore Lydia away from her parents, sending her to detention centers and later to toil in a slave labor camp. It was at the end of 1944 that Lydia was truly tested. The Nazis forced her and the other prisoners on the Death March to Bergen-Belsen, where she spent the remainder of her imprisonment and where she met and befriended Anne Frank.

While at Bergen-Belsen, Lydia wrote and hid notes to document the horrors she witnessed. This heart-wrenching account includes photos and official documentation from the Nazi era. Of her family, Lydia alone survived the concentration camps; her parents and sisters died there. She tells her tale so the world won't forget the innocent victims.