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Staff Pick
Cilka's Journey: A Novel
Current price:
$27.99
Publication Date: October 1st, 2019
Publisher:
St. Martin's Press
ISBN:
9781250265708
Pages:
352
Staff Reviews
How do you survive in a place that was created to exterminate you? Is it rape if you don’t fight back? How can anyone love you after the things you have done? These are the questions that haunted Cilka Klein, a survivor of the WWII Jewish death camps. Cilka was still a child, at the age of 16, when she entered Auschwitz Prison Camp, where, for three years she fought to stay alive by sleeping with the “scum of mankind.” After the war she was sentenced by the Soviets to 15 years of hard labor in a Siberia gulag. Her crime; working with the enemy as a prostitute and a spy. This heart-wrenching story was revealed by Lale Sokolov, the tattooist of Auschwitz, who calls Cilka the “bravest person I ever met.”
The story is intense, powerful, and makes me wonder; If you had two choices, survival or death, which would you choose?
—
Virgie
Description
From the author of the multi-million copy bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz comes a new novel based on a riveting true story of love and resilience.
Her beauty saved her — and condemned her.
Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1942, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival.
When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka: She is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a Siberian prison camp. But did she really have a choice? And where do the lines of morality lie for Cilka, who was send to Auschwitz when she was still a child?
In Siberia, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, including the unwanted attention of the guards. But when she meets a kind female doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing and begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions.
Confronting death and terror daily, Cilka discovers a strength she never knew she had. And when she begins to tentatively form bonds and relationships in this harsh, new reality, Cilka finds that despite everything that has happened to her, there is room in her heart for love.
From child to woman, from woman to healer, Cilka's journey illuminates the resilience of the human spirit—and the will we have to survive.
Praise for Cilka's Journey: A Novel
Praise for Cilka's Journey:
“Cilka’s Journey gives a memorable portrait of the minutiae of women’s lives in the gulag. Morris has a fine eye for the way they managed their meagre food supplies, pulled threads from their bedding to use in sewing, or strips from blankets to make eye masks so they could sleep in the White Nights, when the sun never set — and even helped each other give birth.” —The Jewish Chronicle
“[An] incredible story of bravery and love.” —Library Journal, Starred Review
“In the stirring follow-up to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Morris tells the story of a woman who survives Auschwitz, only to find herself locked away again. Morris’s propulsive tale shows the goodness that can be found even inside the gulag.” —Publishers Weekly
“Although the subject matter is dark, this is an inspiring and ultimately uplifting story of strength and survival.” —Good Housekeeping (UK)
Praise for The Tattooist of Auschwitz:
“Based on a true story, the wrenching yet riveting tale of Lale’s determination to survive the camp with Gita is a moving testament to the power of kindness, ingenuity, and hope.” —People
“The Tattooist of Auschwitz is the story of hope and survival against incredible odds and the power of love.” —PopSugar
“The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document..I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they’d read a hundred Holocaust stories or none.” —Graeme Simsion, internationally-bestselling author of The Rosie Project
