The Librarian of Auschwitz is a fictionalized account of real events that occurred in the Auschwitz-Birkenau labor camp, 1944-45. The main character Dita Adler is based on a real person named Dita Polachova Kraus who was 15 years old when she and her parents were rounded up with other Jews from Prague and sent to the Nazi camps. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dita worked in what was known as the “family compound” in Block 31. Prisoners here were given “special treatment”; children were allowed to survive and […]
War Is Never Over
Primo Levi’s memoir The Reawakening begins where his Survival in Auschwitz ended. It’s the last days of the WWII, and Levi is trying to stay alive in what passes for a hospital or sick bay in concentration camp. Levi, who committed suicide in 1987, was an Italian Jewish writer and a chemist. He was arrested in as a part of the Italian resistance in 1943, and to escape being shot as a partisan, he confessed to being Jewish, and after a short interment in Italy, […]
A love story wedded to a tale of horror
Novels on the Holocaust are always difficult reading on an emotional level, and this one was no exception. Richman’s writing is simple and evocative, intimate and universal, and I got lost in the world of her two tragic lovers while sobbing at the horrors she depicted in the Nazi concentration camps Terezin and Auschwitz. Although told as a love story, Richman gives us a tale of genuine heroes, Jewish artists and musicians who struggled to keep their humanity amidst inhumanity, and who fought to […]