Rose-Marie
Auschwitz-Birkenau
In March 1943, three-year-old Roma girl Rose-Marie Trollmann arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau with her mother Hulda. They are tattooed with the prisoner numbers Z-2348 and Z-2349 and taken to the Roma section. Hulda and her father had smuggled food to British prisoners of war. Therefore, Hulda was imprisoned and deported. Somehow, she managed to bring her three-year-old daughter with her. Rose-Marie's father Herman had also been imprisoned, he was sent away as a soldier.
There are many children in the camp that Rose-Marie plays with, and Hulda watches over Rose-Marie all the time. Rose-Marie sees how people are forced to stand in line and shot to death. The bodies are thrown into a heap. During a roll call when prisoners are to be taken to the gas chamber, Hulda pushes Rose-Marie aside so that she survives.
Concentration Camp
During the camp period, Rose-Marie often sits on Hulda's back in a piece of fabric. At one point, Hulda falls over. She is scared, and the soldiers scream at her to get up.
Hulda gives Rose-Marie all her food, such as soup with potato peels. When Hulda becomes ill, little Rose-Marie takes their tin cup and stands by the tap where water drips to give her mother something to drink. One day, when Rose-Marie is at the latrine, a woman falls through the hole because she is so thin. The other prisoners try to help her, but they are too weak.
Hulda and Rose-Marie are transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 2, 1944. They are sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and then further to the Mauthausen concentration camp and then to Bergen-Belsen. They remain there until British soldiers liberate the camp.
The Liberation
In April 1945, Rose-Marie and Hulda Trollman were liberated by British soldiers in Bergen-Belsen. On July 20 of the same year, the boat M/S Karskär departs for Malmö, as part of the Red Cross and UNRRA's rescue operation "the White Boats." Both are seriously ill after their imprisonment in the concentration camps. When Rose-Marie and Hulda arrive in Malmö, they receive new clothes.
The Life in Sweden
Hulda has developed an eye disease that leads to her being operated on three times and eventually having one eye removed. Hulda is placed in various eye clinics and tuberculosis homes, and eventually ends up at a school for the blind in Växjö. Since she cannot take care of her daughter, Rose-Marie ends up in an orphanage in Hyssna outside Gothenburg.
After two years in the orphanage, Hulda can finally bring Rose-Marie home. Hulda has met a man, Edvin, and they settle down in Aspeboda. At school, Rose-Marie is teased for her tattooed number, and the children wonder if she has been in prison. Rose-Marie asks her mother Hulda several times where they come from, but she gets no answer.
When Rose-Marie is around 12 years old, they accidentally find out that her father Herman is alive. Hulda and Rose-Marie travel to Germany to meet Herman. He is seriously ill but has survived after spending seven years in a Russian prison. He has been searching for Hulda and Rose-Marie but could not find them and thought they had not survived. Herman has remarried and has two sons. Rose-Marie wants to stay in Germany with her father, but Hulda decides that both of them will return to Sweden.
When Rose-Marie is 18, she removes the tattooed numbers. In the late 1970s, she meets Sten, with whom she lives the rest of her life. Rose-Marie has three children, two daughters and a son.
