When Tova Friedman was five years old, she lost her name.

“27,633. I don’t know my social security number, but I know this,” says Friedman, who still has that number tattooed on the inside of her left arm. She received it upon arriving at Auschwitz concentration camp when she was five years old.

“No, I’ll never forget. I couldn’t forget because that was my name for a long time. I didn’t have a name and they called a number and I had to say, ‘Here.’”

More than 1.1 million men, women and children were killed by Nazi forces at Auschwitz. Friedman and her mother made it out alive.

“The woman who tattooed me said to me, ‘If you get out, you can get a long-sleeved shirt and you can cover it up and you won’t be ashamed.’ And I thought, ‘Did she say I’d get out? Really? What did she mean I’d get out? I didn’t know what freedom was, I never went to school, I didn’t have food. I grew up just like that. I thought that all Jews have to be killed.”

At four years old, Friedman and her parents were sent to a labor camp. Her mother was forced to sort through clothing left by Jews who had been killed and clean up their blood.

“They did a very good job in breaking us," said Friedman. "I always say first they burned our books, then they broke us psychologically, then they killed our people.”

Upon arriving in Auschwitz, guards checked Friedman for weapons, tattooed the child and then cut off her hair.  

“It was traumatic seeing my braids on the ground and completely shaven," remembers Friedman.

As Nazi forces got word that the Allied Powers were gaining ground, Friedman remembers the horror that broke out at the camp, “They were shooting everyone they could see in order to have no witnesses but there were witnesses everywhere.”

Friedman lived to tell her story, in part, thanks to her mother, who she says helped hide her under a dead corpse to survive.

“She was still warm when my mother put me in because she had to manipulate her. She couldn’t manipulate her if she had been there for a few hours. So, she manipulated me in such a way that covered up the corpse with a blanket.”

On January 27, 1945 the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz. The young girl with this number tattooed on her arm grew up to see many of her dreams come true. She moved to New York, earning a degree in psychology from Brooklyn College and now has a family of her own. Even 77 years after the liberation, she still shares the story of number 27,633.

“I speak as a witness for the 1.5 million children who were murdered so I speak for them and I honor their death. I don’t want them to be forgotten," said Friedman. “Remember us. Remember us. It makes me so sad. Remember us. They knew they were going to die. Those were their last words. Remember us. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”