The Librarian of Auschwitz

by Antonio Iturbe

Lilit Thwaites (Translator)

Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezín 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.

• ISBN10: 1627796185
• ISBN13: 9781627796187
• Publish Date: 1 April 2018 (first published 7 November 2017)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Henry Holt & Company Inc
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[Beth C.]

am fascinated by any books about books, bookstores, librarians. I suppose it comes from my longest-running love affair being with books. So I was curious about this one, excited – but also a little hesitant. I had the book for over a month before I decided to finally dig in. Auschwitz is a heavy topic, books notwithstanding – and it’s even more fraught these days, with what we see happening all over the world. However, read it I did – and it was excellent. It is a reminder of what was, a caution of what could be, and – above all – a celebration of the indomitable spirit and will of one young lady.

To see the rest of the review, please visit https://stillmorewords.com/2020/02/10/review-the-librarian-of-auschwitz/

[Mad Soul Child]

Как же черт возьми местами тяжело читать некоторые подробности. И не потому что книга плохая или не очень написана. Просто не укладывается в голове, как можно быть такими бесчеловечными отморозками и обрекать людей на такие страдания. И ещё больше удивляли эти самые люди, которые смогли до конца выдержать это все. Я не представляю чем руководствуются читатели, которые ставят этой книге 3 звёзды а то и меньше. Чем бы ни было это обусловлено.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

The story being told in The Librarian of Auschwitz is fascinating, but the way it is being told doesn’t do it justice. I found myself zoning out a lot during this book because of the lack of rising action. I’ve thought long and hard about this, because the partially-fictionalized stories of the real people in this novel have a lot of potential, and I think these stories should be told, but the experience was challenging for me as a reader. To put it frankly, I was bored.

Although I enjoy history, my main interest leans toward stories older than WWII. That said, I find myself drawn to tales about the Holocaust because of the horror of it – these are stories and truths that need to be known and told. The Librarian of Auschwitz screams to be that kind of story, and indeed, Dita seems to be that kind of person who should be remembered. The way Antonio Iturbe went into it was interesting, because it’s a piece of historical fiction… but it also relies heavily on real people. Where a book like The Book Thief does very well because of the way it took a real, horrible event and built a character that stole the reader’s heart… The Librarian of Auschwitz barely scrapes Dita’s surface.

I found it interesting that Iturbe chose to change Dita’s last name, but not her first. Her character and the others feel torn between the author wanting to tell their stories, but not wanting to speculate too much about their thoughts and feelings. And with something like Auschwitz, I understand his hesitation. The way the story rolled out… I think it would have been more successful if it was fictionalized a little more. Not to take away from the real stories, but to pull it away from the expectations of Auschwitz and give the author a little more freedom to flesh out the characters. There was a bit at the end talking about the real life people, and I think that it honors them very well… but in sticking so close to reality, the book lost something of heart.

I also do want to mention that I read the English translation of The Librarian of Auschwitz. This book was originally published in Spanish, and translations always lose a bit of something. It depends on the translator, of course, but that could be the case here.

This book was enough to make me interested in Dita Krause and the Children’s Camp at Auschwitz and Freddy Hirsch, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep my attention. The way this novel seemed to be awkwardly suspended between fiction and non-fiction made it drag out and kept the characters at an arms length. The writing style was strongly telling (not showing) and just generally… it felt like the right story, but the wrong storyteller.

The main problem people have with this book is that it sometimes resembles a textbook instead of a fiction novel. Personally, I think that was one of the strengths of this novel. If this was a complete work of fiction, I wouldn't have learned as much as I did. If it did not give the actual numbers, people wouldn't understand how many people it affected. Sure you hear the numbers sometimes, but while reading a fictional story hearing how many people actually died makes people realize what happened more than one they just hear numbers randomly.

This story was so touching and it was one of the first stories that I read about the second world war that did not change historical facts in a way that lessened the impact of what happened.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

This is what I wanted The Tattooist of Auschwitz to be. Iturbe wove Dita's story together with so many others that you couldn't help be sucked in. Her love of books and her desire to survive just pour forth from the page. This one is going to be a permanent addition to my bookshelf.

[lindsey]

I feel bad for only rating this three stars, because I think the story itself is important. However, I struggled to connect with any of the characters. The dialogue was a bit choppy and didn't seem natural, though that may have been due to the translation. For a book loosely based on real events, the story was a bit slow at times. I don't feel like it truly did justice to the horrors that occurred at Auschwitz.

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

The Librarian of Auschwitz is a moving story following Dita, a Jewish teenager who was charged with the care and keeping of eight clandestine books in the secret school the prisoners established in the family “show camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The novel, as clarified by the real-life Dita, is a fictionalization of real events, combining painstaking research with the author’s “rich imagination.” The result is a novel that is hard (it’s about Auschwitz, after all) but which also highlights the small beauties and acts of humanity that can flourish in even the most terrible of places.


The book weaves the stories of various other prisoners at Auschwitz into the narrative, ranging from Rudi Rosenberg, a camp registrar who eventually escaped and tried to warn the world of what the Germans were really doing in the concentration camps, to Fredy Hirsch, a youth sports leader who became in charge of the secret school in Block 31. The extra narratives make the book longer, and sometimes sadder since readers know from the beginning that Dita survives but may not be so sure about the other character—but the seeming tangents also help provide a more complete story what happened at Auschwitz.

The point-of-view is therefore sometimes odd, or it may be to readers used to the US young adult market, which is dominated by novels written in a first person limited perspective. The Librarian of Auschwitz is third person omniscient, switching not long among the points of view of various characters who may never interact with each other at all in the book but also to a narrative voice which occasionally interjects straight-up history lessons and commentary into the book.

At times, I found the story slow. I stopped reading it for a while then went to pick it back up, assuming I was at least halfway through; I was actually barely a quarter into the book. However, the story is one that should take time, drawing readers carefully through the various layers. Recommended for fans of historical fiction.