The Librarian of Auschwitz, by Antonio
Iturbe (2012; English Translation, 2017)
The Librarian of Auschwitz is based on
the real-life experience of young Dita Adler Kraus. She and her family were Jews living in
Prague, when there were round up by the Nazis and first sent to Terezín,
before being transferred to Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz, they were placed in the Block 31, the Family Block, where,
although men and women were separated, families could remain somewhat intact.
Fredy Hirsch, one of the prisoners, ran a
secret school, to keep some sort of normalcy for the children. Although books were forbidden, the school had
a collection of 8 dog-eared and ragged books that had been smuggled into the
camp. Dita was chosen to protect the
books. The novel depicts daily life in
the camp and the struggle to stay alive, while maintaining a modicum of
humanity.
Life in Block 31 was hardly without its
struggles, and one never knew when the Nazis would transfer prisoners to the
gas chambers. Many of the characters in
the novel are real people. The author
met with and interviewed Dita when she was well into her 80s. In the afterwards, the author acknowledges
that he took some artistic licenses with the story, but does present a summary
of the lives of some of the other characters. One such real-life person was Rudy Rosenberg (also
known as Rudi Vrba), who escaped the camp and wrote a detailed report to inform
the world of the horrors of the concentration camps. His report, however, was unheeded. Fredy Hirsch was another real person who life
continues to spark controversy.
Read: February 20, 2018
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