The Librarian of Auschwitz

Starred review from August 28, 2017
Drawing on his own interviews with Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus, who now lives in Israel, Spanish author Iturbe describes the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau in unflinching, straightforward prose (smoothly translated by Thwaites) that reflects his journalism background. A fierce lover of books, 14-year-old Dita helps out in the makeshift school of Block 31, the children’s block in the family camp, and volunteers to take care of eight precious but forbidden books, risking certain death if she were to be found out. The role of librarian for Block 31’s tiny collection gives Dita a sense of purpose in a bleak camp where death, torture, and humiliation are omnipresent. As Dita’s story unfolds, alternating between her present circumstances at the camp and her memories of Prague and the ghetto of Terezín (“a city where the streets led nowhere”), Iturbe interweaves the names and stories of other survivors and victims of Auschwitz, turning the narrative into a monument of remembrance and history. All but guaranteed to send readers searching for more information, this is an unforgettable, heartbreaking novel. Ages 13–up.

This powerful young adult novel introduces listeners to 14-year-old Dita Kraus, a Czechoslovakian Jew who, with her parents, was sent to Auschwitz in December 1943. Through meticulous research, including multiple correspondences with Dita, Antonio Iturbe paints an accurate picture of life in Auschwitz in all its horror. Marisa Calin's narration straightforwardly tells this chilling but ultimately inspiring story with an unemotional delivery that emphasizes the amazing strength, hope, and courage that sustained the prisoners of Auschwitz in the face of incredible inhumanity and deprivation. An opening letter, read by Dita herself, and an afterword recounting what happened to the real-life people who appear in the story give this work the weight of history within a compelling tale. N.E.M. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine