Librarian of Auschwitz, The

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I loved the entire graphic novel. This is a true story, and it isn’t pretty. Teen readers need to know about the Holocaust, and the graphic novel format of this book will help bring the Holocaust to a larger audience. 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. I love that books are precious. We are facing censorship in the USA, where some individuals, groups, and politicians are pushing to censor or ban books from schools. While this has always happened to some extent, the increase of it is alarming to those of us who value the freedom to read. The only title Dita can remember is A Short History of the World, by HG Wells, in Czech. Her friend, Auschwitz survivor Ruth Bondy, who recently passed away, also remembered a geographical atlas and something by Sigmund Freud. Another survivor friend, Eva Merova, says there was a book of short stories by Czech writer Karel Capek. Educators would borrow books to teach the alphabet to the younger children. “As there were no pencils or papers to make notes I had to remember who took what at the end of each day.” Not all the Characters are likeable, for sooo many reasons, they are based on real characters, and some of them are horrific but harshly real, the Soldiers for example, how they treated people was unimaginable but it happened. But then you had characters like Dita and Fredy Hirsh who melted my heart.

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. 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. Thank you to Tracy at Compulsive Readers Tours for this copy which I reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 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. The ‘children’s school’ was established to create a sense of normalcy. Some families didn’t think it mattered if the kids kept learning and reading given their nightmare conditions —but we soon see how much it did matter.

In 1949 they moved to Israel with their young son and other survivor friends. They lived in Kibbutz Givat Chaim, near Hadera, where Otto was an English teacher and Dita worked in the shoe-repair shop. Later Dita also became an English teacher and they taught at the Hadassim school, east of Netanya, founded in 1947 for European Jewish refugee children. First of all I just want to take a moment to admire the cover, it's absolutely stunning and I think it represents the book perfectly. 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. Nor is there blasphemy in disturbing the solemn hush with parody and satire. If we are to know and bear witness while accepting Levi’s injunction against “understanding”, we need all our wits about us. Sometimes the comedy just isn’t comic enough, as is the case in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator; or not funny at all as in Roberto Benigni’s film Life Is Beautiful; and sometimes it makes us squirm and fret, and then wonder why we shouldn’t, as in Martin Amis’s novel The Zone of Interest. But comedy can be a contentious and disruptive force whether or not its subject is the Holocaust. The important thing is to accept that seriousness can take many forms. Whatever Jojo Rabbit is up to, it can't be accused of spurious reverence

On her own now, Dita heads to find Margit, who left her directions on how to find her. When Dita arrives at Margit's door, they embrace with the feeling of true freedom.

It is always a revelation when you read a book about someone who at such a young age took on a role that was not only dangerous but also one in which death awaited her if she was caught.

Farcical Fuhrer …Hitler as an imaginary friend in Jojo Rabbit. Photograph: Fox Searchlight Pictures/AllstarEs difícil entender arriesgar la vida por unos cuantos libros, pero me quedo con la conclusión del escritor al final que dice así: