As Long As I Hope to Live

‘An extraordinary book . . . vivid and heart-breaking’ – The Jewish Chronicle

Claudia Carli’s discovery of 12-year-old Alie’s precious friendship album offers a moving glimpse into the lives of a class of schoolgirls in WW2 Amsterdam – most of whom did not survive the War.

In As Long as I Hope to Live, Carli brings Alie and her friends touchingly and vividly to life. Interspersed among their everyday hopes, pleasures and longings – the very ordinary thoughts and feelings of 12-year-olds – is the harrowing truth of life under Nazi occupation: the constant fear of a knock on the door, the abrupt realisation that a friend is missing from class, the sombre news that a family member has been taken away.

Those fears were not unfounded. Alie and her mother died in Sobibor in 1943. But Alie’s sister Gretha survived Auschwitz and kept her promise to her sister to preserve the friendship album so long as she hoped to live: a promise whose legacy is honoured in this book, ensuring that the lives of these girls will not be forgotten.