Borrowed time : survivors of Nazi Terezín remember /

Biographies and photographs of former prisoners from the notorious Nazi camp. Terezín was located in Czechoslovakia, annexed by Germany in March 1939. Popular histories often mention its rich cultural life, including concerts, speeches, and education classes, the result of many "prominent" Jewish people imprisoned there--but also because of the Nazi effort to spruce it up occasionally to impress the apparently easily impressed Red Cross inspectors. "Terezín would be the first and only concentration camp the International Red Cross ever inspected during the war," writes Darling, a photographer and former professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism and Media, who shows it to be a loathsome place. Not a death factory like Auschwitz nor a permanent concentration camp like Buchenwald, Terezín was built as a temporary holding pen for Jews from German-occupied Europe. Until its liberation in May 1945, 143,000 arrived; about 90,000 "were deported to German killing centers and sites in the East." About 35,000 died inside Terezín, mostly from starvation and disease. Initially, children were exempt from deportation and experienced better living conditions, but as the war progressed and German armies retreated, conditions in all Nazi camps deteriorated significantly. "Of the fifteen thousand children that spent time at Terezín," writes the author, "only twelve hundred were still alive in spring 1945." Darling provides around 75 short biographies based on his interviews, and he includes an expansive glossary at the end of the book. The author acknowledges that his book is not a comprehensive history of the camp or the time period: "My intent was simple--to make portraits and collect first-person narratives of those imprisoned there--letting each voice tell their particular piece of the Holocaust; experiences remembered from seven decades ago." A solid entry into the Holocaust literature, presenting stories that need to be told. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.