Kindle Book: The Auschwitz Escape

The Auschwitz Escape

by Joel Rosenberg

Length: 480 pages

Format: Kindle Book Price: $9.99

How I heard about it: A friend who knows I love Holocaust literature

 

Basic Premise: The book follows Jean-Luc, a French Gentile, and Jacob, a German-born Jew. Jean-Luc and his family have been helping Jews escape to freedom from their small town in France. After the Nazis killed his parents, Jacob fled his homeland and joined resistance effort in Belgium. Their stories are told independently at first, but, as you may imagine from the title, they link up when the two meet at Auschwitz and plan an escape.

My Take: 9 out of 10 (scale here)  
Historical fiction has never been my favorite genre. As a child, I loathed all things associated with history. As I grew into myself as a reader, however, I began to regard historical fiction not as a history lesson, as I had always thought of it before, but instead as story in which the setting played the role of a main character. Of all of the historical fiction I have read, Holocaust literature is the genre in which I am most well-read. Over the past 15 years, I've basically read every book that has crossed my path about the subject, and some of them multiple times. So when a friend at church recommend this book to me, it was an easy sell.

However, having read so many books of this type, I can safely say I have a love-hate relationship with books like this. My head is inclined to read about all the atrocities committed during this time period, the unspeakable things that were done to the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of innocent people, and believe it. My heart, however, suffers a little from disbelief. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's because I have never been exposed to anything remotely violent and can't really wrap my mind around it. Or maybe it's because of the innately shocking evilness of the acts. Whatever it is, it nearly always makes me ask the question, why do I keep reading about this stuff? Why do I keep putting these terrible thoughts and images in my head? Why do I keep reading about things that are so so so so evil? (Is there a better word than evil? I tried in vain to think of one.) I always decide that if people had to live it, the least I can do is read about it.

This book was no different than others that regard, and in some ways maybe worse. The story was good and the author was obviously well-informed both in events of the day and in the details of every day life in the camps. There were times where I wanted more information, particularly in the beginning when the author would gloss over a year or two without details, but by and large, the story was well-constructed. There were moments when I had physical reactions to what I was reading, like a gasp or tears or sighs of anguish. And I can always tell a good book by the way I wake up the next morning. The ones that are really good, that really take hold, that really penetrate, are the ones I can't stop thinking about the next morning.

This was a GREAT read.