Hania Rosenberg: A Holocaust Survivor's Journey from Auschwitz to Hope

Holocaust survivor Hania Rosenberg, now 90, escaped the death camp of Auschwitz at the age of eight. Eighty-two years later, she plays the Israeli superstar Gali Ataris' 'Hallelujah' for 'the future of Israel and its people' in her Summer in P1 radio program.

Growing up in the city of Oświęcim, which became infamous as Auschwitz during the German occupation, Hania Rosenberg witnessed her once safe, primarily Jewish cultural city transform into a nightmare.

She was five when her mother made gas masks from vinegar and torn sheets, and the family fled into the night. At eight, her father died in Auschwitz. The Rosenberg family was taken there, and one day in August 1943, her mother managed to distract a guard, allowing little Hania to run into the unknown, away from death.

A Polish family risked their lives to save her, but informers forced the 'cousin' to hide in a cellar during the day, concealed under root vegetables and preserves.

Through the White Buses, she came to Sweden after the war ended, a happier fate than most Jewish families at the time. After three years apart, she was reunited with her mother.

The story is stark and powerful.

This is how it was, and it must never happen again.