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This book documents one life within the system that defined the Holocaust.

Maria Katz Claman, known as Mary, was a Hungarian Jewish teenager when she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944. Within minutes of arrival, she was forced into a process that determined survival or death. She survived. Most did not.

Taken. Numbered. Survived. traces her path from a prewar life in Kisvárda, Hungary, through ghettoization, deportation, Auschwitz, and forced labor in Germany. It follows her through liberation, displacement, and eventual immigration to Canada, where she rebuilt her life after the war.

This is not a fictionalized account and not a traditional memoir. It is a documented historical record based on:

• Recorded testimony from the USC Shoah Foundation
• Archival records from institutions including Arolsen Archives, Yad Vashem, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Transport lists, camp records, displaced persons files, and immigration documents

The book is structured in two parts.

Part One presents the lived experience, grounded in testimony and historical context.

Part Two provides the documentary record that supports and verifies that account, allowing readers to examine the underlying evidence directly.

This dual structure serves a clear purpose. Testimony preserves what it felt like. Documentation confirms what happened.

Together, they create a record that is both human and verifiable.

At a time when Holocaust denial and distortion persist, this work contributes to the historical record by connecting individual experience to documented fact. It shows not only what was done, but how it was carried out through a system that was administrative, organized, and recorded.

This is the story of one survivor.
It is also a record of the system she was forced to endure.