R E K. (bigstone) - , reviewed on 2/18/2022 + 1438 more book reviews

Cecilia Klein, known as Cilka, is sixteen in 1942, only a child, when she arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. When the camp commander sees how beautiful she is, Cilka is removed from among the women prisoners. Subjected to forceful sexual acts, her experiences help her understand that power, taken without permission, can helps one survive.

With the war ending three years later, prisoners are freed. However, Cilka, now eighteen, is labeled a collaborator for consorting with the enemy. One spiteful prisoner identifies her a slut yielding to Nazi demands. Consequently, the Russians, who freed the prisoners, send her to a Siberian prison camp. There, Cilka finds new and familiar experiences. Luckily, she meets a doctor, who trains the quick learning Cilka to help care for the ill under the brutal cold and depressing conditions. As a nurse, she has more privileges but still finds death, terror, and, once again, too much attention from the controllers. When she sees an interesting fellow prisoner, she watches for him to cross her path. Eventually, a friendly relationship ensues. Cilka falls in love.

From child to woman, from woman to healer, the novel underlines how humans can find the endurance to survive. A fictional story, the book is based on a woman's life in two prison camps. It's hard to believe that a young girl could survive both the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp enduring sexual abuse and sentenced later to fifteen years in a Siberian Gulag. She only did what she had to survive. As the story unfolds, Auschwitz-Birkenau flashbacks integrated with life in the Gulag. The author retells this heart wrenching and emotional story of a woman who found she was living in terrible times.

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