A review by enmcurrie
The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe

dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was such a powerful and beautiful book. It wasn’t without flaws, but that didn’t matter. The core of the story carried all the way through. The pace is quite slow but it definitely picks up towards the end, and the last 100 pages are definitely the most harrowing. While at times it was a little hard to completely follow along, everything threaded together by the end to create such a bittersweet storyline. It’s based on this young girl, Dita Kraus, or Dita Adler in the book, who ends up running this secret little “library” made up of 8 old books in Aushwitz, in a makeshift Jewish family camp, set up by the Nazis as a front to cover up the atrocious mass murdering they were doing from any visiting foreign representatives. Many of Dita’s peers and Dita herself do end up being transferred or moved around later on though. In the background of the plot, the book also follows a couple of young men in the SS (also real people) who manage to escape Aushwitz and its horrors.
What was so emotive about this book is how of all these poor people (from children to elderly), in the most dire and horrific of circumstances, could find happiness in the smallest of things. I also loved the message that humans simply surviving is not enough, and that we need things like literature to keep humanity alive, hence why 8 old and tattered books in a place as awful as Aushwitz-Birkenau was so important. It was incredibly sad and heart-wrenching throughout, and hard to read at times. The vivid imagery of the concentration camps and the novel’s use of free indirect speech allowing you into the other characters’ thought processes made it incredibly compelling, and knowing that so many of them don’t end up with the freedom they deserve is the worst part. I think it’s a wonderful read and all of the characters were great, but Dita will most definitely stay with me for a long time. I’m very glad she could tell her story, she’s truly remarkable. The ending was beautiful. It left you feeling incredibly sad for all the loss Dita had faced, but incredibly relieved and content that she achieved all that she did.
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