A Delayed Life: The True Story of the Librarian of Auschwitz by Dita Kraus, 340 pages. NON-FICTION Feiwel and Friends (Macmillan), 2020. $25.
Content: Language: G; Mature Content: R; Violence: PG-13.
BUYING ADVISORY: HS – OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
Dita is a young girl when the Nazis start to take over Europe. She grew up in Prague and had a happy childhood as an only child to a middle-class Jewish family. As they are moved throughout the war from their home to the ghetto and on to Auschwitz, Dita recounts her memories from that time. By the time the war ended, Dita was sixteen years old, and shortly after that her mother died from complications of being at Auschwitz and Dita was an orphan. Dita marries and they move to Israel and have a family.
This memoir encompasses Dita’s whole life with little memories from different times throughout. It is a slow read and very detailed. My greatest confusion is that at no time does it mention her as a librarian, which is the subheading. The Librarian of Auschwitz is based on her life, but this book doesn’t mention anything about it. The content includes a clinical, yet graphic, explanation of sex. She comments on her own maturation. There is a gruesome and very graphic explanation of the latrine situation at the labor camp and she describes a bombing victim’s wounds.
Reviewer, C. Peterson
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment