Book

Remember me

Claudia Carli &

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Alida “Alie” Lopes Dias (1929-1943), her friendship album, and all the girls that wrote in it

“This album belongs to me, for as long as I hope to live”

This is what Alida “Alie” Lopes Dias wrote on September 21th of 1941, in the friendship album she received for her 12th birthday, two days before.

On June 11th of 1943,  three months before her 14th birthday, she and her mother were killed in Sobibor. Her older sister Gretha survived the war: years later she would show her little sister’s friendship album to Claudia Carli, who would turn Alida’s story into this book.

After extensive archival research, and interviews with Alida’s girlfriends who’d survived the war, Claudia Carli wrote As Long As I Hope to Live: a complete, moving, and harrowing account of what the war meant to Alida, to her family, and to her friends from school. For some of the girls that wrote in Alida’s album, their poem is the last tangible remainder of their existence.