the smallest library

Author : Antonio Iturbe
Title : The Librarian of Auschwitz                    
Published : 10/10/2017
Pages : 423
Genre : Historical fiction
Publisher : Henry Holt & Company

     Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezin ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the librarian of Auschwitz.

 

     I came across this book while lost between the stacks in a bookshop in Amsterdam. The cover caught my eye as is seemed like such a  beautiful image. The tale of children from Auschwitz is one that does come up too often. I think this is maybe down to a few key things. But for most of us, the horrors the people went through were bad enough without having to think how a child would cope with it.

     In this day and age with so many books out there about what took place in Auschwitz, you may ask your self what more could be written about the place. In the case of this book, we follow Dita a young girl brought to the camp from the ghetto of Terezin in Prague. Among the many things, Dita is she is brave to put her life on the line for the sake of a handful of books. But in her mind, they represent far more than pages held together in a binding. They are the hopes for a better future and a rebellious act against those who want to hold her down and take the lives of herself and the people around her. They also form an escape for the children around her someplace the can go that the Nazi cant get them. For me, her curiosity as to the actions of the adults around her seems like that of a real teenager. She doesn't understand why some would choose to take there own lives or why others such as an SS officer would want to save a prisoner at the risk of taking a bullet himself. But these things do not stop her from trying to find out. She spends so much of the book risking her own life in this pursuit of truth. She is a character who I came to have great empathy and respect for. Despite all she fights for what she believes in and even witnessing all the horrors Auschwitz has to offer refuses to give up.

     When books are written about the camp they mostly fall into two categories the first is nonfiction accounts written by those who were there. In the second we get complete fictionalized charters But the setting is real. Iturbe chose, in this case, to blend the two in a book based on real people but fictionalizing there time within the camp walls. Any of these books in the fiction category walk a fine line of being disrespectful to those who end up there. I think in this case the author has managed to get the balance just right. He manages to capture a sense of what life must have been like in the family block. He shows that even in the darkest of places people find a strength to come through the other side. The author Delivers a story that weighed heavily on me. These are story's that are not suppose to bring us any joy but to help in reminding us of the events that took place. 

     His use in blending fact and fiction Is one that he manages to pull off. I could tell that this was not something he had rushed into. There had clearly been a lot of research put into the story he had chosen to deliver. And the way in which the people interacted with each other and the choices they made showed he had spent time talking to survivors. All of this is down with the upmost care and respect. When adding in real people it gives the story a timeline through the years and gives faces to names.  This is used to great effect with Dr. Mengele who was a frequent visitor to the family block. Throughout the book, he turns up lurking around and studying the children. Every time he came up it gave me a chill down my spine. He is written in such a way that it feels at any moment he may snatch one of them up and take them away for one of his experiments. To the children, he is the face of all the evils they are encountering.

    As I said before I've read a few books on this subject I did manage to find something to appreciate within the pages of this book. It shows that teenagers can rise up and show great courage in the face of adversity. When given the choice Dita gave so much to preserve something that others may have cast to one side. When fighting for her very survival she could have said no after all what good where books going to do to keep her alive. But she saw something much greater in the written word and that was hope.