The Book Depository The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe
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Description: The Librarian of Auschwitz : Hardback : Henry Holt & Company Inc : 9781627796187 : 1627796185 : 20 Oct 2017 : Based on the experience of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus, this is the incredible story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust. The Book Depository The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9781627796187
MPN: 1627796185
GTIN: 9781627796187
Author: Ralph Blumenau
Rating: 5
Review: WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS. This novel is closely based on a true story, told to Iturbe by the librarian herself when she was 80 years old. The people in the book appear under their real names: the only changes Iturbe has made is in the surnames of the librarian and of her future husband. Block 31 at Auschwitz-Birkenau was for children, and was part of a family camp which was used by the SS as a showcase of happy children when Red Cross officials came to the camp. Alfred Hirsch, in his twenties, whose back story is also told, was in charge of the block as its senior (Blockältester) and was assisted by a Professor Morgenstern and several other assistants. They were supposed to keep the children disciplined and “entertained” while their parents were involved in slave labour. Hirsch enthused them about Zionism; he trained them in sport; and he also got them to perform plays which were performed in front of the SS. But giving them any kind of education was strictly prohibited. However, Hirsch had managed to acquire a tiny library of just eight books, some of them incomplete or damaged – an atlas, a geometry treatise, H.G.Wells’ “History of the World”, a Russian grammar, a Russian novel, Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”, a book by Freud, and Hasek’s “The Good Soldier Svejk”. Hirsch and his assistants used them as teaching material; and some of the assistants also knew stories (there are six such “living books)” with which they captivated the children. One of these assistants is Ota Kraus, who will one day be Dita’s husband. Hirsch had appointed the Czech fourteen-year-old Dita Adler as the “librarian”: she was to transport these books, two at a time, in an inside pocket sewn specially by an inmate, from their secret hiding place in Hirsch’s hut to the teachers. Every now and again, the Gestapo mounted an inspection. If the books were discovered, it would mean death for her; but the Gestapo did not discover them. However, the sinister Dr Mengele was always around the camp and warned Dita that he was keeping an eye on her, and, that if she stepped out line, she would be the next victim of his grisly experiments. Dita, though scared, was not deterred: she regarded her librarianship as her sacred duty, cherished the books, and carefully repaired what damage could be repaired. Every three months a new batch of prisoners arrive in Auschwitz. To make room for them, those who have been there for six months are moved on to a quarantine camp, BIIa, and from there for “special treatment”. When the time comes, Hirsch is among the 3,800 September arrivals who were moved, while Dita was in the December batch that was staying. There is in the camp a resistance movement led by one David Schmulewski, assisted by Rudi Rosenberg, whom the Nazis had made registrar to keep an ever fluctuating list of prisoners. The resistance was made up of several competing groups: communists, social democrats, Zionists, anti-Zionists and Czech nationalists. The group in the quarantine camp know they need to rise up before they are moved on; but there is only one man whom they all respect: Hirsch. Rudi urges Hirsch to give the signal for revolt; but Hirsch knows that in any uprising, the children will be at greatest risk. On March 8th, he died, apparently by suicide, but more probably because he was given an overdose of luminal by a doctor who feared the result of an uprising. There is no revolt, and the next day most of the September group were gassed. Dita cannot understand why Hirsch, who had always told them to fight to the end, should have committed suicide. Hirsch’s successor as Blockältester was Seppl Lichtenstein. He has to tell them one day that Block 31 was to be evacuated by the following day, July 11th, 1944. They appear, naked, before Dr Mengele, who sends those selected for gassing to the left, and who are spared for labour to the right. Dita has been told to go to the right. Her mother has been told to go to the left; but the Germans don’t notice that, instead, she joins the group on the right. In May 1944, the group on the right is sent to a factories in Hamburg, and then, in March 1945, to Bergen-Belsen. It is not an extermination camp, but has its own horrors – brutalities, starvation, disease, and corpses which survivors have to drag to pits - all graphically described. And then, on April 15th, 1945, the camp is liberated by British troops. Tragically, Dita’s mother dies of disease two months later. When the war is over, she is sent to Prague, to a hostel for the repatriated. There she met Ota Kraus again, and they married. In 1949, after the Communist take-over, they emigrated to Israel, where they became teachers, parents and grandparents. … A substantial part of the book is about Dita’s memories of the pre-Nazi period, then of its early days, then of the family moving, first to Terezin in November 1942 and then, in December 1943, to Auschwitz with all its horrors; also about her contacts with her always stoical mother and, until his death, her beloved father. There is also the tense story of the escape in April 1944 from Auschwitz of Rudi Rosenberg (a.k.a. Rudolf Vrba) and Fred Wetzler. When they arrived in Slovakia, they sent out a detailed account of Auschwitz. It was the first account to reach the outside world, but it was ignored for a long time. Another story is about an SS officer, Viktor Pestek, who was sickened by the Holocaust and who has fallen in love with an inmate, Renée Neumann and who planned for the two of them and Renée’s mother to escape from the camp.
Author: S Payne
Rating: 2
Review: Like many others, I have read a few books based in Auschwitz and, if they are presented as fiction, I always find them a bit tricky to review. It’s hard to distance yourself from what is happening in the book when they are based on real life people but written as a work of fiction. This book centralises around Dita who is an Auschwitz survivor and found herself being the librarian of Auschwitz whilst she was there. This was no mean feat as books were banned by the Nazis and Dita was little more than a child at the time. Dita works in a secret children’s school, “Block 31”, within a family camp in Auschwitz and most of the book is written from her perspective. We survive with Dita, as she risks her life everyday, through numerous tragic and horrific events, no less awful from having heard them before. Each time I read about Auschwitz everything is brought to life for me again. Overall, I was disappointed with this book. Before I started, I was excited to learn about Dita and the huge and important role that she played during this time but unfortunately, I found the writing lacked emotion and therefore I struggled to connect with Dita. It’s possible that this happened due to the translation of the text into English but this really affected how I enjoyed the book. I found the pace slow in places and I got a bit confused with some of the flashbacks, asides and shifts in POV. I felt that there were parts in the book where Antonio Iturbe lost sight of the story and it read a little like a history book with facts, statements and figures. Although I didn’t love this book, it is still a really important story and I am glad that it was told. I am glad that I read it and I really enjoyed the section at the end that told what happened to the people we met in the story. This was clearly well researched and factual but, unfortunately, it lacked the emotion required to really engage me and absorb me into the story.
