The Librarian of Auschwitz: Graphic Novel

I just finished reading the graphic novel version of the library in a Auschwitz. The Librarian of Auschwitz is a compelling story of 14-year-old Dita, a Jewish teen growing up in Czechoslovakia. During World War II the Nazis her rounded up her family and neighbors and forced them into a concentration camp.

Brave and compassionate, Dita risks taking care of and distributing a tiny cache of books to lend to her fellow prisoners. Reading is prohibited but it transports people from the atrocious situation they find themselves in.

One of the most intriguing parts of the story was the mystery of why the people at the first camp Dita and her parents are taken to were treated better than I expected. Dita and her parents were leery of why people I her side of the camp didn’t get their hair shaved off or why they were allowed to wear their own clothes when on the other side of the fence the prisoners wore striped uniforms and had no hair. It turned out Dita was in the portion of the camp that the Nazis showed human rights inspectors. When the tours were over, cruelty and dehumanization reigned with beatings, inhuman living conditions and for most people back breaking labor.

I recommend this compelling story with its fine illustrations and well crafted characters.