At the heart of this wrenching memoir of a teenage girl's wartime survival is something utterly unexpected: a love story that blazes briefly in a dark corner of occupied Poland.

Judged only as a World War II survivor's chronicle, Millie Werber's story would be remarkable enough. Born in central Poland in the town of Radom, she found herself trapped in the ghetto in the summer of 1942, at the age of 14, as a slave labourer in an armaments factory. Millie was transported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 before being marched to a second armaments factory. She faced death many times; indeed, she was certain that she would not survive. But she did.

Many years later, when she began to share her past with Eve Keller, the two women rediscovered the world of the teenage girl that Millie had been during the war. Most importantly, Millie revealed her most precious private memory — that of a man to whom she was married for a few brief months. He was, if not the love of her life, her first great unconditional passion. He died, leaving Millie with a single photograph taken on their wedding day, and two rings of gold that affirm the presence of a great passion in the bleakest imaginable time.