It's a five-year project that began with a single message: "I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Andra Bucci."That message to KCRA 3's Deirdre Fitzpatrick began a journey that had us all trying to keep up with then-80-year-old Andra Bucci and her daughter. While being a survivor of one of history's worst atrocities is story enough, Andra's story is also one that involves a mother's genius, a case of mistaken identity, the kindness of someone cruel to most others and the daughter of Sigmund Freud. It was enough to fill several lifetimes.In 1944, in the height of Germany's Final Solution, the Nazi phrase for what would be the attempted extermination of the entire Jewish people, the Germans had moved into northern Italy. They had reinstalled Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, as head of their version of the Italian state in the northern part of the country. Andra, her sister Tatiana, and her family lived in what was then Fiume.At the beginning of World War II, their father, in the Italian Merchant Marines, was captured by the Allies and taken prisoner, as was their uncle, requiring their aunt and cousin to move into their Fiume home. Every night, to ensure that Andra and Tatiana remembered their father, the girls kissed their parents' wedding photo goodnight.In the dark of night the Nazis and Italian Fascists came through the door of the Bucci house in Fiume and took Andra, Tatiana, their mother Mira, their Aunt Gisella, their Nona, and their cousin Sergio. They were loaded onto a cattle car and taken by train to Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. There, as the chaos of "selection" began by the Nazis, someone asked if Andra and Tatiana, dressed the same, were twins. Mistaking them for that, they were taken with their mother to a room to get tattooed, showered, and their mother and aunt's hair completely cut off. It was telling because the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death" liked to experiment on children, particularly twins. Most other children were immediately killed at Auschwitz.Mira Bucci managed to visit the girls at their children's barracks in the evening and told them something very important: "always remember your name." For the Nazis, the tattoos, the numbers, were a way to strip identity and remove humanity. Being just 4 and 6, respectively, Andra and Tatiana could easily have forgotten who they were. But each night they said "goodnight, Andra" and "goodnight, Tatiana." Eventually, their mother stopped visiting and they believed she, like so many others, had died.Upon liberation, the girls, in an orphanage in the United Kingdom, were told not only had their mother, but their father had survived, too. They were taken by train back to Italy where they started their lives up again. But for the picture and the brilliant request to remember their names they may have never been reunited."Always Remember Your Name" tells how these two girls, now women with full lives and in their 80s, go regularly back to Italy, telling their story over and over again in order to make sure that the memory stays alive. They become little girls again, inside the Auschwitz complex, telling the children what life was like in the very camp that took the lives of so many others. They give their testimony anywhere that will let them.It's a story about a woman in Northern California whose life few know. The same woman who travels to Italy and is treated like royalty. Two women whose lesson to young people is to always think for yourselves and keep the story alive so something like this never happens again. Watch our documentary Sunday, Oct. 27 at 9 p.m. on KCRA 3. See the trailer in the video above. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter