All But My Life is an astonishing book that touched me to the core. Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor, tells her tale with heart-wrenching words that will send any reader reaching for tissues. The pain she endured, the strength she carried, and her hope of survival show how loving and brave a little girl named Gerda could be. This story is one of sadness, death and liberation.

When the Germans invade her home country of Poland, Gerda is very young. Her family, as Jews, are persecuted and made to ration their food, live in their basement and forced into ghettos. Gerda watches her brother leave to fight for something she does not understand and watches her parents lose hope. Soon her parents are taken away to separate concentration camps, and later she realizes that that tearful day was the last time she would ever lay eyes on either of them.

Each leg of her journey is a bigger leap than the last. They keep taking things from her - her innocence, her love - but never her hope to survive. She manages to keep going through ghettos, starvation, two concentration camps and finally the death march. Gerda is liberated, after months of walking, by her future love and the savior of her life.

She tells her tale from the heart, allowing the reader a view into one of the most gruesome times in history. All But My Life is a book that all should read to appreciate what we have. It will stay with me forever.