The Librarian of Auschwitz
Antonio Iturbe
Henry Holt and Company
2012
Translated from the Spanish by Lilit Zekulin Thwaites 2017
Ms. Hen found this book at a Little Free Library near where
she lives. She almost didn’t pick it up because she thought it was a young
adult novel, and she doesn’t always like to read books like that. But she was
intrigued by the title, and wanted to learn what it was about.
This is a novel based on the true life story of Dita Kraus,
a prisoner at Auschwitz who helped in the family camp and the school. Her job
was to protect the books in the school and keep them safe because they were not
allowed to have books, since the Nazis thought they were dangerous. People who wanted to control other people did not let them have
books because they can contain revolutionary ideas, and prisoners could develop dangerous thoughts if they read them. She doesn’t know if people
believe that in today’s world, at least not in the United States.
Dita lived in Prague with her mother and her father before
they were sent to Terezin, a ghetto on the outskirts of Prague. Life was bad in
the ghetto, but they didn’t know how much worse it could get. They were sent to
Auschwitz and suffered without much food, and were put to work. Dita’s father
died of natural causes there. Dita worked in the school and she helped with the
children. She had a pocket made in her smock so she could hide the books. She
couldn’t read all the books because some were in different languages, but she
still loved and protected them. She learned that the
Nazis started the family camp as a showcase to try to prove to the world that they were
not terrible, to be used as a display in anyone came to visit. Nobody ever did.
Dita became interested in the teacher at the school Freddy
Hirsch and why he killed himself. She could never understand why someone in his
position would do such a thing. Her whole life she struggled trying to
comprehend this.
When Ms. Hen read this, she found it scary. She couldn’t
read that much at the same time. She thought this was a young adult novel, and
it’s written like one, but some scenes are so graphic, she doesn’t think children
should read this. This might be appropriate for teenagers, but not teenagers
today who are delicate snowflakes. Ms. Hen would have read this when she was
young. She read a lot of dark things during her childhood, and she can handle unsettling
stories, because that’s the way the world is.
A Passover dinner was described that was eaten in the camp.
They had what passed for matzah, and some food, “Laid out on it in precise order
was a bone of something that could be chicken, an egg, a slice of radish, and a
pot full of water with what looked like herbs floating it in.” Ms. Hen was glad
that there might have been chicken, but along with other aspects of this book,
it made her sad that a celebratory meal was so meager.
Ms. Hen got emotional reading this novel. She has read other
books about the Holocaust, but none as intimate and graphic as this. The author
met the woman the character is based on, and he was impressed by how
intelligent and sensitive she still was at the age of eighty. Anyone who had
endured ordeals such as this would be a courageous person indeed. Ms. Hen
admires people who have survived terrible things, and have come out on the
other side. She recommends this novel to anyone who wants to learn about the
appreciation of beauty amidst horror.
No comments:
Post a Comment