#BlogTour-‘The Librarian Of Auschwitz’ by Antonio Iturbe

About the book…

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.

Out of one of the darkest chapters of human history comes this extraordinary story of courage and hope.

‘The Librarian Of Auschwitz’ is not only an essential read, it is so much more than that-it is a necessary one. I would urge all libraries and school’s to keep a copy as the lessons it teaches are life affirming.

I am not terribly well read in this area , and when I examine why, it is usually because I find this subject just incredibly distressing, at the same time as wanting to champion Rememberance Day and the teaching of World Ward 2 in schools, it is simply still too difficult,for ,me, to read about.

Which could make me seem hypocritical, after all, I have the luxury of being able to close the page or choose not to read the book, however, these people did not get the opportunity to opt out of this life, Dita did not ask to spend her childhood in a concentration camp.

This is why it is essential to urge readers to tackle the horrors of war head on in books like this, which are not just eminently readable-Dita’s voice comes through Toni and Lili’s words very powerfully-it is a reminder of the power of hope. It is a reminder, a shocking one, that there were children whose entire life before the camp was entirely overshadowed by racism, fear, violence and seperation. From being rounded up to live in ghettos, to living in the shadow of the towers which bellowed black smoke of burnt bodies daily, as bodies of friends, realtives, countrymen were burnt.

They spent their entire lives knowing their existence cost less than the price of a bullet-how do you begin to find the courage to keep going,and more than that, to use books to fight this? How do you retain a sense of self in the face of this or even find the ability to grow, to learn and even to laugh?

In a place where a human life is worth less than the price of a bullet, how do you keep hope alive?

For Dita it was in the power of books. As a fourteen year old, she had spent most of her life in a state where she and her family were outcast, the n sent to Auschwitz. Worse than this, she was in the prescence of true evil-if one can define such a thing amongst the hideous treatment her block experiences-in the form of one Joseph Mengel.

Absolutely bone chilling, the descriptions of how he took children from the camp and would turn up, gauging the prisoners for suitable inclusion in his ‘experiments’ (it was torture, pure and simple) are purely terrifying. And yet, in the midst of this, the defiance of Dita and Fredy to educate and keep ideas alive is quite breathtakingly beautiful. They have 8 books which must be kept hidden at all costs, books which keep dreams and ideas alive-none of which the Nazis want to encourage in the slightest. They want destruction of these humans to be bone deep, by depriving them of the luxury of thought, they are torturing mind body and soul.

So the lengths that the camp inhabitants go to to preserve the notions, the maps, the stories of the putside world not only illuminates the unending power of books to share and spread information, they represent hope, trust in God and faith that their suffering will not have been for nothing.

And it has not, as long as people like Dita are so generous in their ability to tell and inform in books of their own, the power of the bound ideas in books will remain as a light shining in the darkness, even a tiny flicker of a torch which kept hope alive in the most brutal, savage and torturous of times.

As Dita says,

‘ ‘Poor littke thing! It’s easy to understand.She got frightened.She’s just a child.”

A child? Dita thinks.Far from it. You have to have a childhood to be a child!’

This line really spoke to me, it is so difficult to pin this book and it’s importance to one line or indeed, several, but this one, really brought home the perspective of children who born in the shadow of death and destruction and what it must have been like for them.

Taut, powerful and a paean to the endlessly human strength to survive in even the most brutal of environments, this is a book I would urge anyone and everyone to read.

About the author…

Antonio Iturbe lives in Spain, where he is both a novelist and a journalist. In researching The Librarian of Auschwitz, he interviewed Dita Kraus, the real-life librarian of Auschwitz.

Lilit Zekulin Thwaites is an award-winning literary translator. After thirty years as an academic at La Trobe University in Australia, she retired from teaching and now focuses primarily on her ongoing translation and research projects.

Dita Kraus was born in Prague. In 1942, when Dita was thirteen years old , she and her parents were deported to Ghetto Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz,. Neither of Dita’s parents survived. After the war Dita married the author Otto B. Kraus. They emigrated to Israel in 1949, where they both worked as teachers They had three children. Since Otto’s death in 2000 , Dita lives alone in Netanya.

She has four grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Despite the horrors of the concentration camps, Dita has kept her positive approach to life.

Links-https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

Twitter @ToniIturbe

@EburyPublishing

@Tr4cyF3nt0n