The Tree of Life, Book One: On the Brink of the Precipice, 1939

An extensive fictional work drawing on the real events of the Holocaust. Annotation Describes the lives of the protagonists in the Lodz Ghetto at the beginning of World War II. Chava Rosenfarb, herself a survivor of that Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, draws on her own history to create realistic characters who struggle to retain a sense of humanity and dignity despite the physical and psychological effects of ghetto life.