Reviews with content warning for Torture - The Librarian of Auschwitz

I never understood the desire to be entertained by people's traumas? This book is based on the life of Dita Kraus, and the author took some artistic liberties by fictionalizing parts of her story. For this reason, it is hard to tell what is true and what is not. I have seen people complain that the narration lacks emotion or passion, but I don't see why that emotion needs to be exaggerated when you're dealing with the genocide of a people. Despite being uncertain about the accuracy of the details, I found the book to be honest. You get the sense of dejection, anger, fear, hopelessness, helplessness, rebellion, and perseverance from the prisoners of Auschwitz. The book is honest about deception, it is honest about the desire to be hopeful, the desire to escape, the desire to survive. There were disturbing moments when you realize some prisoners would take advantage of the more vulnerable for their own survival. At the end of the day, they were all desperate to survive.

I saw someone on GoodReads that they prefer this novel to The Diary of a Young Girl because they found Young Girl to be boring. It is icky to me to desire entertainment from a book about such terrible traumas. I was moved by the honesty of the narrative, independent of the accuracy. It is not five stars because the weird limbo between reality and fiction confuses the narrative.

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challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I bought this when I finished The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s journey last year. I wanted to read more fictionalised accounts of survivors from Auschwitz. I wanted to understand more about their lived experiences. On that front, this book did not disappoint and like all war literature, was incredibly emotive.

The story focuses on Dita, a young girl who is sent to the family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I had NO idea there had been a family camp at Auschwitz and so this book provided insight into a part of history previously unknown to me. The book relays her experiences in the camp and introduces the stories of people she meets while imprisoned.

Although I loved these other stories, I felt that the narrative jumped between stories in a disjointed way that left me feeling a little disorientated. These stories could have been structured as separate chapters, dispersed throughout the main story, which I think would have helped with that feeling. This might also have allowed for a more thorough retelling of people’s experiences. I would have loved to read more about Miriam, Renee, Professor Morganstern and Rudi.

It might be because of the translation, but the narrative also felt quite stilted. I swear the tense or the person perspective changed a couple of times. I had to reread paragraphs or phrases and on occasion, this made it quite hard to get through. I will admit that at times, I was counting the pages left, which is a shame to admit.

This falls in the 2 star category due to the narrative structure alone. I found it quite slow paced and hard to get through. But the subject matter really interested me, which pushes it up towards a 3 star!

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