Review by Booklist Review
With an introduction by Primo Levi and a lucid translation that won a 1991 award from PEN, this compelling anthology of stories from a survivor of the women's camp at Birkenau--originally published in 1947 and now in its seventh Italian edition--is a remarkable addition to the store of Holocaust writing available in English. Each incredible story is simultaneously the portrait of an individual and a poignant commentary on the camp's perversion of significant events in the life of a woman: childbirth, sexuality, love, sisterhood, motherhood, and above all, death. The inmates, certain that they are already "kaput," in the next breath console themselves that the war will be over by Christmas. They forge pathetic, fragile friendships and make supreme sacrifices of loyal devotion. The narrator's voice, constant throughout, is strikingly honest. As she perseveres in the weary, base struggle to survive, her own point of view fluctuates between degraded humanity and illuminating compassion. The lowest lows are shot through with glimpses of freedom and flights of spirit. ~--Anne Schmitt
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Curls of smoke constantly rising from the chimneys of the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau form the backdrop for this moving and powerful Holocaust testimony of the women's camp. Written in Italian and translated by novelist Schwartz, it won the 1991 PEN Renato Poggioli translation award. The six narratives presented revolve around the feminine aspects of the prisoner's minimal lives. The author is a presence in each narrative, recording events that defy description. In ``Lili Marlene,'' the women are part of a kommando unit filling up trams with sand to build roads. Lili, a beautiful 17-year-old Hungarian, is prey to the advances of the German boyfriend of her Kapo, Mia. After being severely beaten by Mia, Lili is deemed unfit for future work, and at the evening selection Dr. Mengele takes her out of line. In ``Under Cover of Darkness'' Maria unsuccessfully tries to hide a pregnancy, hoping for freedom and the possibility of raising her child. The dignity of these narrations helps to personalize the individual sufferings and deaths of the millions of anonymous victims of the Nazis.-- Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
As its survivors die, so too will the stream of Holocaust testimony. Though narrowing, the trickle continues. This Italian testament has both polish and poetry and strong images of suffering barely borne, but more indelibly it serves as a particular focus into the specially female hell of the camps, what made the woman prisoner different from the man. Displaced, brutalized, sick, dying, the women wretches of Millu's Birkenau lager are as much buoyed as cast down by what remains of their sentimental or family relations: a husband or lover or son perhaps still alive across the fence in the men's camp, Auschwitz; a hidden pregnancy; a sister unforgivably become a whore in the camp's brothel. There is no fake sisterhood or sorority--if anything, the internecine competition is fiercely vocal, sexually cynical--but there is shared attention to the pain of the heart as well as to the body and spirit: These are prisoners who might give over their whole meager ration of daily bread to a camp fortuneteller in hopes of hearing how a loved one fares. The storylike chapters have a professional, even on occasion a melodramatic feel, somewhat disconcerting; but Millu's writerliness is also able to deliver the unforgettable passage from which the book takes its title: ``I remember what Jeanette used to say, watching the dense spirals rise from the crematoria and trail across the sky: the black curls were the souls of the lager's old- timers marching in orderly rows of five toward the kingdom of the merciful God, while the wispy little white curls that drifted and vanished waywardly, the merest puffs, were the souls of children and newcomers who had yet to learn discipline.''
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
