Three Sisters

In June 1929, in the small Slovak town of Vranov nad Topľou, Menachem Meller gathers his three young daughters in the family backyard. Menachem carries a bullet lodged in his neck from the Great War and faces risky surgery the next day. He asks Cibi (seven), Magda (five), and Livi (three) to promise they will always take care of one another and never let anything separate them. All three promise. Their mother, Chaya, watches tearfully from the doorway. Menachem dies on the operating table, and Chaya's father, Yitzchak, moves in to help raise the girls.

Thirteen years later, in March 1942, Slovakia is under Nazi-allied rule. The Hlinka Guard, Slovakia's fascist state police, are rounding up young Jewish people for forced labor. When seventeen-year-old Magda falls ill, the family doctor hides her in the hospital. Cibi, now nineteen, is away training with the Hachshara, a Zionist youth movement preparing young Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Two Hlinka guards arrive at the Meller home and order fifteen-year-old Livi to report for transport. When Cibi returns and learns of the order, she resolves to accompany Livi voluntarily, invoking the promise she made to their father. On their last night, Chaya packs suitcases with clothes, food, and linden tree tea, the linden tree being a recurring symbol of home and family throughout the narrative.

After a night at the synagogue and days of detention at a military compound, the sisters are forced into cattle wagons. The suffocating journey ends at Auschwitz, where SS officers with rifles and dogs greet them beneath the gate reading ARBEIT MACHT FREI ("Work sets you free"). Inside the camp, the sisters are stripped, shorn of all hair, and tattooed: Livi receives number 4559 and Cibi 4560. They are assigned to a demolition site pushing carts of salvaged bricks. Cibi volunteers her literacy skills to their kapo (prisoner overseer), a German woman named Ingrid, and earns a record-keeping role. Livi finds a small knife in the mud, which becomes her talisman for the rest of the war, allowing the sisters to ration their bread.

Back in Vranov, Magda returns from the hospital to learn her sisters are gone. Consumed with guilt for having been safe, she spends the next two years evading the Hlinka Guard by hiding in the ceiling cavity of a Christian neighbor's house or in a forest cave. Uncle Ivan, Chaya's brother, uses contacts to keep the Meller name at the bottom of the deportation list.

In the camps, the sisters endure starvation, typhus, and brutal selections in which SS officers decide who lives and who dies. In summer 1942, they transfer to Birkenau, a newly constructed women's camp. A kapo named Rita assigns them to the Kanada, the sorting depot where prisoners sort through confiscated belongings of new arrivals, occasionally smuggling extra clothing or food back to their block.

During one selection, Cibi swaps places with Livi so that if Livi is sent to the left, to death, Cibi can follow. Both survive, but they watch thousands of women march barefoot to the gas chamber. Both sisters contract typhus at different times. A Polish nurse saves Livi from a hospital selection by hiding her in a latrine; the other patients are sent to the gas chamber, a memory that haunts Livi for the rest of her life. On a freezing night when their blanket is stolen, the sisters walk toward the electrified fence to end their lives. An anonymous girl persuades them to return and gives them blankets from other bunks. The next morning, the two girls who lost those blankets are found dead, frozen in their sleep. This memory haunts Cibi for the rest of hers.

Cibi is transferred to the Birkenau post office, while Livi becomes a camp messenger. In her rounds, Livi witnesses a male kapo named Isaac beat two prisoners to death. He notices her watching and threatens her. She never tells Cibi.

In April 1944, the Hlinka catch up with Chaya, Yitzchak, and Magda. Before leaving, Magda hides the family's silver candlesticks, photographs, and keepsakes in the ceiling cavity. Magda is separated from her mother and grandfather during detention. The Slovak National Uprising briefly frees her, but she is recaptured by German soldiers and transported by cattle wagon to Birkenau.

On Cibi's twenty-first birthday, a friend tells Cibi she has seen Magda in the camp. Cibi searches until she finds her, and the sisters collide in a tearful reunion. Cibi smuggles Magda out and enlists Lale, the camp tattooist, to ink the number A-25592 onto Magda's arm, giving her an official identity. When Livi returns from her duties, the three sisters are together in Birkenau for the first time.

Weeks later, Livi spots Chaya and Yitzchak among new arrivals on the platform. The sisters race to the fence and manage a brief, agonizing exchange. Chaya entreats them to look after one another. Yitzchak smiles when told all three girls are together, then leads Chaya toward the gas chamber. The gas chambers cease operations the very next day, making them among the last victims.

In January 1945, the prisoners are ordered to evacuate. The three sisters march out of Auschwitz together. Those who collapse are shot. Magda sustains the group with stories and memories of home. They travel in open coal wagons to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where they take in a young girl named Eva who has lost everyone. From Ravensbrück, the sisters volunteer to transfer to Retzow, a sub-camp. During registration, Cibi jokingly tells the clerk she is from New York, a quip that nearly backfires when the Red Cross later tries to repatriate her to Sweden as an American citizen, threatening to separate her from her sisters. As the march resumes, SS guards gradually abandon the column. The sisters and several other women break away. A young soldier raises his rifle, but Cibi steps forward and calmly tells him to walk away. He does. The women wander the countryside until American soldiers in Brandenburg inform them the war is over.

The sisters travel back to Vranov, only to find their house occupied by a stranger. Magda darts to the ceiling cavity and retrieves the pillowcase containing the candlesticks and photographs. With no recourse, they resettle in Bratislava among other survivors. On April 20, 1947, Cibi marries Mischka, a fellow survivor who lost his first wife and young daughter in Auschwitz, and gives birth to a son, Karol. Persistent anti-Semitism drives the sisters to emigrate. Magda and Livi train in the Moravian forests, then travel to the port of Constanta. On the ship to Haifa, Livi encounters Isaac, the violent kapo, but stands her ground while Magda brandishes a gun. In February 1949, Magda and Livi reach Israel. Cibi and her family follow months later.

The sisters settle together in Kfar Ahim before Magda and Livi move to Rehovot. Magda marries Yitzchak Guttman, a fellow survivor, and works in the household of President Chaim Weizmann. Livi succeeds her and bonds with the president, who traces the numbers on her arm in silence. Livi marries Ziggy Ravek, a young technician she first noticed on the ship, on May 2, 1953. Each sister carries defining wounds: Livi cries herself to sleep for years until the birth of her son Oded in 1955; Cibi never fully resumes praying; Magda struggles with guilt for having been safe, though her sisters insist that knowing she was safe sustained them. The candlesticks travel with the family to Israel and are lit at every gathering, symbolizing Chaya's presence.

In December 2013, three generations gather at Livi's apartment. Cibi arrives in a wheelchair, Magda with a cane. Livi's son Oded and his wife Pam reveal a glass sculpture etched with Livi's Auschwitz number. Cibi raises her sleeve and her sisters do the same, their tattooed numbers still visible on aged skin. She reflects that the numbers, meant to dehumanize them, instead sealed their promise and gave them the strength to survive.