Hi, I'm Karen Blankfeld. I wrote a story for The New York Times last December about two Holocaust survivors who met and fell in love when they were prisoners in Auschwitz and then reunited 72 years later.

So I'm the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors who are Eastern European refugees and I've been really interested in stories that are parallel to theirs.

So a couple of years ago, I began researching stories about children who made it into the United States under very difficult circumstances.

During World War II, it was incredibly hard to come into the United States.

There was a lot of anti-immigration sentiment. Nativeism was at an all time high.

People were saying, keep America for America's children. And immigrants just weren't making it into the United States.

So as I was researching, someone introduced me to David Wisnia. He was a prisoner in Auschwitz and he survived and he managed to come into the United States.

So I was interviewing him and we were almost done with our interview. I was actually getting up at his kitchen table putting my coat on when he mentioned this lover he had while he was in Auschwitz.

I kind of sat back down. My coat half on and he told me about Helen Spitzer for, as he calls her, Stippy.

I was totally stunned when he told me this story. I would have never imagined that people were able to fall in love while they were in a concentration camp of all places.

David and Stippy's story is a story about hope. It's a story about love. It's a story about finding music and beauty when you're in the darkest of places.

And finding a way to still feel some sort of humanity when all of humanity seems to be gone.

So here's my story, lovers in Auschwitz, read by Julia Whalen.

The first time he spoke to her in 1943 by the Auschwitz Crematory, David Wisnia realized that Helen Spitzer was no regular inmate.

Stippy, as she was known, was clean, always neat. She wore a jacket and smelled good. They were introduced by a fellow inmate at her request.

Her presence was unusual in itself, a woman outside the women's quarters speaking with a male prisoner.

Before Mr. Wisnia knew it, they were alone. All the prisoners around them gone.

This wasn't a coincidence, he later realized. They made a plan to meet again in a week.

On their set date, Mr. Wisnia went as planned to meet at the barracks between Crematories 4 and 5.

He climbed on top of a makeshift ladder made up of packages of prisoners clothing.

Ms. Spitzer had arranged it, a space amid hundreds of piles, just large enough to fit the two of them. Mr. Wisnia was 17 years old, she was 25.

I had no knowledge of what, when, where? Mr. Wisnia recently reminisced at age 93. She taught me everything.

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