Librarian of Auschwitz, The

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Worse, this push – which especially affects LGBT+ and civil rights history books for young people – has political teeth from newly-passed state and local laws. School boards are also bowing to these attempts to censor content in schools. With the potential for prosecution in some states, it’s a scary time to be a librarian and teacher. The publisher’s response – “Heather is a fiction writer, not a historian” – is a disingenuous attempt to have it both ways. Either you’re aiming to tell the historical truth or you aren’t. The classic defence of novels and films of this sort, that they are “based” on real events, is no defence at all. “Based” conceals a world of subterfuge, giving the author access to the best of both worlds – “truth” in the historical sense and “truth” in the imaginative – while having to bear responsibility for neither. So Dita’s story will be an important one for teachers and school librarians. This graphic novel is based on an adult novel, which I already put on-hold in OverDrive. I’m excited to read the full novel version of Dita’s story. It took a few chapters to get that ‘hooked’ feeling...(part of it might’ve been my mental debate)....I’ve owned the ebook since it was released - but when one has read as many books about the holocaust as I have ( as many of us have)....we begin to tiptoe cautiously —

After reading some classic Holocaust novels such as Night| by Elie Wiesel and the classic The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank or even great young adults novels such as The Edelweiss Express, or the amazing The Book Thief. this is a difficult for me to rate, as i have found to be the case with many WWII/holocaust stories that are based on real life people but written as a work of fiction. I loved reading comics as a kid and I wasn't above reading a Classic Comic or two or maybe more instead of the book the comic was based on. In school, I was an undiagnosed dyslexic and reading was sometimes difficult. So it stands to reason that as an adult and a teacher, I'm a big fan of books done in graphic format. They are just what some readers need instead of a large and for them, for whatever reasons, unwieldy novel. And for others, they are just a fun way to read. But, the graphic needs to be well done, and in today's world, most of the time, they are. Which is why is pains me to say that I did not like The Librarian of Auschwitz: The Graphic Novel. Totalmente recomendable, una novela gráfica que emana sentimiento y que te hace desear darle una oportunidad al libro en el que se basa. No esperaba que la historia de Dita, una de las supervivientes del Holocausto nazi, consiguiera despertarme tantas emociones. Sin duda, es una de esas obras que todavía hoy en día te hacen pensar en la crueldad que puede imperar en una sociedad cuando se emprenden acciones deleznables.

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The true violence of Auschwitz is very low key in this story which makes me feel it would be suited to a younger audience as a first introduction to the atrocities of the time, 13 years +. That’s not to say there is no violence, a prisoner is hung and a girl beaten. Life in BIIb continues until news comes that the Nazis are going to liquidate the family camp and separate the fit to work from the rest. Dita's mother Liesl, who by this time has grown old and is very weak, narrowly escapes death, as she is able to sneak into the group that is fit to work along with her daughter. They eventually end up in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The officers have no idea that in the family camp in Auschwitz, on top of the dark mud into which everything sinks, Alfred Hirsch has established a school. They don’t know it, and it’s essential that they should not know it. Some inmates didn’t believe it was possible. They thought Hirsch was crazy, or naïve: How could you teach children in this brutal extermination camp where everything is forbidden? But Hirsch would smile. He was always smiling enigmatically, as if he knew something that no one else did. It doesn’t matter how many schools the Nazis close, he would say to them. Each time someone stops to tell a story and children listen, a school has been established. Iturbe includes a moving postscript which explains his reason for writing the book and his meeting with the woman that inspired this story, Dita herself, who is still as strong, outspoken and passionate in her eighties as she was as a young girl. This novel is one that could easily be recommended or taught alongside Elie Wiesel’s Night and The Diary of Anne Frank and a text that, once read, will never be forgotten. VERDICT A hauntingly authentic Holocaust retelling; a must for YA collections." — School Library Journal, starred review, on The Librarian of Auschwitz

It’s been nearly seventy-five years since Dita’s number 73305 was tattooed on her arm in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The digits may have faded but the memories have not. She pulls up her sleeve to show us the faded digits, turning to the children, instructing them to share her story with others. How we feel about novels making claims to be true, over and above what we mean by imaginatively true, will tell us how we feel about novels altogether. It isn’t new for writers or their publishers to make such declarations. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was sold on the assurance that his “Life and strange surprizing adventures” were “written by himself” and therefore authentic. Moll Flanders the same. And that was 300 years ago. But the novel has evolved considerably since then and it hasn’t been thought necessary to assure us that Thomas Hardy based Jude the Obscure on a real Dorsetshire loser who wasn’t able to kill a pig. That we are returning to fact to justify fiction is the sure sign that the novel no longer commands the respect it did. La real historia de Dita Dorachova una niña de 14 años que durante su encierro en el campo de concentración de Aushwitz, arriesgo su vida para convertirse en la guardiana de 8 libros que eran utilizados en el pabellón 31 para enseñar, entretener o distraer a los niños durante el infierno nazi. Fredy, then aged 27, was an inspirational educator who created a small oasis of relative normality within the death camp. Dita had known him from her childhood in Prague, where he was her sports instructor. She had met him again in the Terezin Ghetto, where he was running the department for youths and children at the Jewish ghetto administration. Whatever the film is up to, it can’t be accused of spurious reverence. An atrocious event doesn’t automatically confer seriousness on every representation of it. Seriousness has to be earned again each time. A feelgood Holocaust – whether it takes the form of pseudo-historicity or redemption romance – not only exploits the dead, it demeans the living.I found the actual story took awhile to find its rhythm. About midway through however it succeeded in getting my attention and at that point was hard to put down. The plot is also unique from other Holocaust books in that it continues past Auschwitz and into other camps and liberation. Given that the story is based on Edita Krause's actual experience, and her life intersects with other historical prisoners at Auschwitz, other accounts are weaved into the storyline such as Freddy Hirsch and Anne Frank. Who knew that a family unit existed at Birkeneau? For what purpose would such a unit exist??? In an environment in which people are being killed daily and survival rate is low, unit 31 provided at least a small portion of the prisoners with a moment to disconnect with their reality. Books - a contraband punishable by death - are used to teach the children in unit 31, to escape the harsh reality and feel a sense of normalcy. Dita, a 14-year-old girl, arrives at the family compound and is given the risky yet prestigious job as librarian at the secret school. The SS are unaware of the library's existence so everyday brings the risk of discovery; yet Dita would have it no other way. To her, books are a saviour and a reason to keep fighting and living. Os encariñaréis con Dita y no podréis evitar querer descubrir qué será de ella y de muchas de las personas con las que se cruza. Lo único que me faltó fue adentrarnos mejor en determinados acontecimientos, aunque puedo entender que era complicado condensar tantas cosas en una novela gráfica. To be clear: it is not my argument that the Holocaust should be approached as though it is the Holy of Holies. I have been chased from the Temple myself, accused of defacing sacred memory in my novel Kalooki Nights by detailing the adolescent hero’s obsession with Ilse Koch, the notoriously sadistic wife of the commandant of Buchenwald. An early copy of Lord Russell of Liverpool’s The Scourge of the Swastika, complete with grainy, semi-sadomasochistic photographs, falls into the boy’s hands when he is of an age to be susceptible to its imagery. Thereafter, his imagination riots in the hell of Buchenwald.