Cilka's Journey

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

The Tattooist of Auschwitz  by Heather Morris   288 pages

I have read many World War II-era novels, but never one set in a concentration camp with a love story at its center. And then to learn that author Morris spent years conducting interviews with the real-life Lale Sokolov added an extra layer of realism, yet the reality was overshadowed by the good side of human nature.

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov was rounded up and taken to a Auschwitz-Birkenau, a concentration camp deep inside Poland. Lale was willing to go in order to keep his family out of the Nazi-inflicted harm.

The details of Lale’s journey in a cattle car is horrendous. I can’t even imagine being crowded like that, with only the others around you holding you up.

Soon after his arrival, his captors learn that he can speak five languages, which can be helpful as more and more Jews are brought to this place. Lucky for him. He was made the camp’s tätowierer or the tattooist, the man who inked the number on the prisoners’ left arm. As the tattooist, Lale enjoyed privileges: better accomodations, better---and more---food, warmer clothing.

He soon learned that some of the other prisoners worked in a part of the camp that gathered the money and the gems they gathered from those killed in the crematormian. Lale used the money and gems to bribe guards and others so he could gathered crusts of bread to share among his fellow captives.

In July, Lale fell head over heels with Gita the moment he saw her and tattooed the number 34902. He knew that no matter what the cost, he would survive and marry this woman.

Author Morris takes readers on a journey that is both horrific and happy. I cheered when Lale was successful in helping his fellow inamtes. I cheered louder when Lale and Gita became a couple. I wept as Morris described how the Jews were forced to live, starving a but more day-by-day. Morris focused most of her energy on the love story without making the story seem like the nightmare that it was. That is why I give “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.