The Librarian of Auschwitz

Henry Holt and Company published Antonio Iturbe’s novel, The Librarian of Auschwitz, in America on September 18, 2012. Before the English Language version, Iturbe’s novel appeared in Spain as La bibliotecaria de Auschwitz.

Antonio Iturbe is a Spanish journalist, writer, and professor who has taught postgraduate courses in journalism at universities in Madrid and Barcelona and is the President of the Association of Cultural Journalists of Catalonia. Iturbe wrote The Librarian of Auschwitz when he read about the smallest library in the world; In the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the Nazi’s killed most of Europe’s Jews. While doing research about this tiny library, he stumbled across Edita (Dita) Adlerova, who was the young girl at the family camp in Auschwitz and carried out the duty of librarian. When he found her, quite by accident, he said, “It is a moment that cannot be captured in words.” The Librarian of Auschwitz has been translated into 13 languages and in 2013 it won the Fundacion Troa prize for literary quality and the ability to transmit human and social values.

Plot Summary

Dita Kraus lives a comfortable life with her parents in Prague before Hitler comes to power. Dita watches as Hitler’s army and the SS arrive in Prague to take all the Jews to Terezín (known more commonly by its German name, Theresienstadt), where it becomes a crowded ghetto containing mainly Jews from the former Czech Republic and thousands more from Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and Denmark.

In 1944, the Nazis transport Dita and her family, along with thousands of other Jews from her community in Terezín, to Auschwitz, where they are sent to a special section called the Family Camp. In Block 31 of the camp, a secret school for children has been established. Jews are forbidden to have books, but eight books have been smuggled into the camp: a geometry textbook, H.G. Wells' Short History of the World, a Russian grammar, a novel written in Russian, The Count of Monte Cristo, Freud's New Paths to Psychoanalytic Thought, and Dita's favorite, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk. Fredy Hirsch, a German Jew in charge of the school in Block 31 of Auschwitz, gives Dita the job of keeping the books safe. She loves the books and cares for them, storing them each night in a secret compartment.

The story follows the lives of many characters, including Dita, her friends, her mother and father, Fredy Hirsch, Rudi Rosenberg, Joseph Mengele, and more. Eventually, Dita learns that the family camp is a fake camp, set up by the Nazis so the Red Cross, if it comes to Auschwitz, can see how “fairly” the Germans treat their prisoners. It is located a safe distance from the gas chambers and the ovens, where over a million Jews die.

Over the course of her imprisonment, Dita’s father dies of typhus, and she and her mother disguise themselves as male prisoners to say their last goodbyes. Later, Dita watches as the September transport (the group of Jews that arrived three months before them) are taken to the gas chambers, she knows her December transport is next.

Soon, prisoners hear the allies’ bombs. Dita and her mother, along with thousands of others, are transferred to Bergen-Belsen, the same camp where Anne Frank died. The British liberate the camp not long after, and Dita’s mother dies in a camp hospital. Dita reunites with her friend from Auschwitz, Margit, and a teacher from Auschwitz, Ota Keller, whom she later marries. Dita and Ota move from Prague to Israel after the rise of communism in Prague. 

Another character that appears prominently in the narrative is Fredy Hirsch, the gay leader of the Family Camp school who dies mysteriously before Dita leaves Auschwitz. Though many believe he committed suicide, Dita has trouble reconciling her respect for Fredy and what seems like a cowardly way out of the prison camp. The novel also includes a love story between Rudi and Alice—two prisoners from opposite sides of the electric fence in the camp. Alice dies along with the September transport, and Rudi manages to escape along with another prisoner, Fred. Another love story occurs between an SS officer, Viktor Pestek, and Dita’s friend, Renee. Viktor smuggles out a male prisoner, Siegfried Lederer, to assist him in getting Renee and her mother papers for their escape. Viktor is executed in the process, but Siegfried escapes.