When I saw this book, I knew I wanted to read it. The cover caught my attention and the summary, a historical fiction novel based on a true survivor of the Holocaust, won me. I managed to check this book out at my local library and devoured it in one day
The story revolves around Cilka Kein, a young Jewish girl who was taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp when she was sixteen. When the war ends, the Soviets save the prisoners, unless you were found guilty of helping the Nazis. Cilka was one of those condemned to fifteen years of labor at the gulag camps in Siberia for "working with the Nazis". Cilka's Journey revolves around her time at the Siberian camp, as she tries to cope with her losses and gains. Why does she continue to survive when so many have died? Does she deserve the little bits of happiness and opportunities she keeps receiving?
I decided to rate this book a 5/5. I had read a holocaust book a few years ago by Ruta Sepetys that made me cry, however, it quickly left my mind as the writing was typical to the subject matter. I expected all the horrors I read in that book.
Cilka's Journey is different and this made me uncomfortable. Cilka has spent years submitting to violence against her body and mind, is now tired and resigned to her fate. The story tells about the horrors women faced at concentration camps, but the emphasis is on the psychological trauma they developed. We see women with survivor's guilt, Stockholm syndrome, addiction, how they come to normalize and domesticize their situation (similarly to men who went to war), etc. At moments it feels less like I'm reading about prisoners at a camp, and more like the story of poor women in a foreign country, which is scary. I tell myself it wasn't so bad and then have to pause because this is the mentality these women had to force themselves into in order to survive.
Cilka's Journey can be a hard book to get through unless you're really interested in the nonfiction background. Often it feels like the author could have added more details, especially so that we could better connect with Cilka, but I don't think her goal was to dramatize the events. It's a book with a heavily somber tone on every page
The story revolves around Cilka Kein, a young Jewish girl who was taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp when she was sixteen. When the war ends, the Soviets save the prisoners, unless you were found guilty of helping the Nazis. Cilka was one of those condemned to fifteen years of labor at the gulag camps in Siberia for "working with the Nazis". Cilka's Journey revolves around her time at the Siberian camp, as she tries to cope with her losses and gains. Why does she continue to survive when so many have died? Does she deserve the little bits of happiness and opportunities she keeps receiving?
I decided to rate this book a 5/5. I had read a holocaust book a few years ago by Ruta Sepetys that made me cry, however, it quickly left my mind as the writing was typical to the subject matter. I expected all the horrors I read in that book.
Cilka's Journey is different and this made me uncomfortable. Cilka has spent years submitting to violence against her body and mind, is now tired and resigned to her fate. The story tells about the horrors women faced at concentration camps, but the emphasis is on the psychological trauma they developed. We see women with survivor's guilt, Stockholm syndrome, addiction, how they come to normalize and domesticize their situation (similarly to men who went to war), etc. At moments it feels less like I'm reading about prisoners at a camp, and more like the story of poor women in a foreign country, which is scary. I tell myself it wasn't so bad and then have to pause because this is the mentality these women had to force themselves into in order to survive.
Cilka's Journey can be a hard book to get through unless you're really interested in the nonfiction background. Often it feels like the author could have added more details, especially so that we could better connect with Cilka, but I don't think her goal was to dramatize the events. It's a book with a heavily somber tone on every page