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There are certain books that leave you different, not just in how you understand the past but in how you look at the future. Marceline Loridam-Ivens‘ memoir about her time at Auschwitz-Birkenau and her experience wading through the aftermath left me different. In a mere 100 pages, she pulls you in so deep that you leave feeling simultaneous full and absolutely hollow.

In 1944 Marceline Rozenberg was 15 years old. She and her father were arrested in south France, sent to Drancy and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Marceline survived. Her father didn't. 70 years after, she writes her testimony, in a form of a letter adressed to her father. Brutal and moving Holocaust memoir.

So the plan sort of worked. I‘m supposed to be trying to reduce the volume of books I own, so I‘ve been taking read books down to the charity book case at my local Tesco. Took two in today - and came back with one. So I have still reduced the number of books I possess....

This is a letter written by the author to her father, who died in Auschwitz. In this letter, she tells him how she survived in Birkenau, how was her return from the camps, and how was her life after all that. She writes with a disarming sincerity about the horrible reality in the camps, about the difficulty of coming back from the camps, and also about the difficulty of living afterwards.
I highly recommend it!

A very emotional read💔 really really recommend this beautiful memoir. It really puts into perspective how absolutely abhorrent concentration camps really were and the effects they had on survivors.

This is much more than a Holocaust memoir, this is a harrowing love letter to the author's father who never made it back. This very short read describes life before and reflects on life after, and how it might have been different had the father been there too. It's also a cry for recognition and political resolution and the realization that the Camps never leave those who have been there...
(tagged is the English edition)

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Afternoon reading alternating between these current reads 👌

Do not let the slim size of this memoir deceive you because it is one of the most powerful, emotional, and thought provoking memoirs I have ever read. I highly recommend it.

This brief Holocaust memoir reminds us that post-WWII, outliving the camps and loss remains a challenge. It‘s important to remember that surviving the Holocaust doesn‘t mean you fully lived, as M L-I attests.

The bleakness & horrors in Holocaust-memoirs can be daunting but anybody with even a tiny bit of interest in this era should try this one. It condenses not only Marcelines memories of her time in Birkenau into 100 pages but also its consequences: Trauma, grief, survivors guilt, the death of her family, the birth of a new will to live & build a better world & worries about the present. It's a lot, but made a surprisingly elegant and light read.