The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe

Post date: Mar 8, 2019

This novel is based on the true story of Holcaust survivor Dita (Polachova) Kraus. In 1943 Dita and her parents were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Unlike many Jewish families, Dita's family was kept together in Family Camp BIIb. The Nazis has set up this camp to show the world that they were treating the Jews well. They also wanted to show the world that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp. A school was set up in the family camp in order to keep the children busy. There were no textbooks, pencils, or paper. The only thing the school had were six well used books. It became Dita's job to take care of these books and to hide them from the Nazis. If she was caught it would mean certain death. This is the story of how Dita protected those precious books and survived the camps.