'It's not normal that we survived': Toronto Holocaust survivor was one of Auschwitz's first prisoners - Action News
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'It's not normal that we survived': Toronto Holocaust survivor was one of Auschwitz's first prisoners

Edith Grosman, 95, was among the young women who were the first official transport to Auschwitz.

Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the infamous concentration camp

Edith Grosman, 95, was among the first to arrive in Auschwitz in March of 1942. She spent three years there. (Paul Borkwood/CBC)

At 95-years-old, Edith Grosmanstill wrestleswith survivor's guilt every day.

The faded tattoo of her prisoner number, 1970, is a painful reminder of what she survived and lost during the Holocaust.Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the infamous concentration camp.

Grosman was 17 when she, her older sister Lea, and nearly a thousand other young Jewish women fromSlovakia became the first prisoners of Auschwitz. Many of them, including Lea, never came home.

"It's not normal that we survived, she said."I think there was a higher force that was pushing us to live."

The women's stories are told in a newbook called 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz.

Watch:Edith Grosmanexplains what life was like in one of humanity's worst horrors

'It's not normal that we survived': Holocaust survivor recalls horrors of Auschwitz

5 years ago
Duration 4:56
Edith Grosman recalls her memories of Auschwitz

Video producers: SannahChoi and Paul Borkwood
Videographers: Paul Borkwood