Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris

Cilka's Journey was my most-antipicated fall release and it did not disappoint. A little background: my book group read The Tattooist of Auschwitz and discussed it, a couple months ago. During the discussion, someone brought up Cilka and one of the women in the group called her "the prostitute". I argued that she was not a prostitute but a rape victim. Had she said "no" to sleeping with a Nazi who cornered her at the concentration camp, she likely would have been either beaten mercilessly (and raped, anyway) or put to death. She chose to stay alive and didn't fight but it was still rape because it certainly wasn't something Cilka wanted. The response amongst the group was mixed. I left the meeting feeling frustrated.

So, I was thrilled when I found out there was a new release coming soon that revealed what happened to Cilka. At the end of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, you find out Cilka was accused of being a collaborator and a spy because she slept with Nazis in the concentration camp and spoke several different languages.

Cilka's Journey begins with her release from a death camp (I think she was in Birkenau, at that point), after which she was immediately sent to another prison and then onward to Gulag Vorkuta, above the Arctic Circle. There, she was to be imprisoned for 15 years. Cilka's Journey is a novelized account of her time in the gulag, the friendships and dangers, the work she managed to acquire, and how she fell in love and was eventually released. There are flashbacks to Cilka's time in the concentration camps that help fill in the story of what happened to her while she was there, beyond what you learn of her in The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

There's also some additional material to fill out the facts of what life was like for women in gulags, at the end of the book. I appreciated that. While Cilka was a real character and much of what is in the book happened to her, Cilka's Journey is a fictional work based on facts (the author goes out of her way to make that clear) and things like the friends Cilka made in the gulag are creations by the author. But, she made it clear that Cilka was not a prostitute, as she was accused of being, but a prisoner whose life was always, always in danger and submitting to rape was one of many things she had to do to survive.

Highly recommended - A difficult but very satisfying read, especially if you were already curious about Cilka and what became of her. If you haven't read The Tattooist of Auschwitz, that's OK. Cilka's Journey stands alone fine, although I also recommend The Tattooist and I suspect the reading of Cilka's Journey is much more fulfilling if you have gotten to know her, already.

Many thanks to St. Martin's Press for the Advance Reader Copy!! 


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The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris and F2F Report

I knew I would read The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris eventually, since it's a WWII novel. But, it was my F2F group's selection of the book that prompted me to buy a copy and then read it for discussion. As it turned out, I was totally not in the right mood to read about the Holocaust. But, it didn't matter. Once it came up to the top of the stack and it was time to read the book, I made myself open it and found that it's an engrossing story. No worries about not being in the right mood. It probably helped that I've missed out on F2F meetings for several months and was determined to show up.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is the novelization of a true story about a young man who was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. A Jew, his family was told that they must pick one person to work for the Nazis and Lale volunteered to be the one, since his brother was married and had children. Packed into the cattle cars of a train, Lale spent days on the ride from his home to what turned out to be not a workplace but a concentration camp. There, he was told to turn over his possessions, his hair was shaved off, and he was given the clothing of a Russian soldier. On the first night, he was headed to the trench where people relieved themselves when he saw a Nazi open fire on the men who were there, a horrifying way to begin his imprisonment but one that made him vow he would survive till the end of the war.

I can't recall exactly how he became the tattooist and that doesn't matter. The job that Lale was given protected him from trigger-happy guards; and, his determination to behave in a way that would keep him from getting any attention also helped. But while Lale was given extra rations and a safer place to sleep, people were starving around him and he felt obligated to find a way to help them. The Tattooist of Auschwitz describes how one prisoner in a death camp survived, found a way to acquire extra food and medicine to share, met a beautiful prisoner and fell in love, and helped as many as he could to survive.

Recommended but what a gut-wrenching read - It's always difficult reading about life in the concentration camps of WWII but doubly hard when it's nonfiction or based on a true story, as The Tattooist of Auschwitz is. The one thing that really kept me going during a time when I was not in the mood to read about this dark chapter of history was the fact that I knew the author had interviewed Lale. Although he was safer than others, he wasn't completely safe from the possibility of brutality or death. At any moment, Lale could have been taken for torture by Dr. Mengele, whom he frequently encountered, or shot and replaced. But, if the author was able to interview him, clearly he survived.

F2F Report:

We discussed The Tattooist of Auschwitz in my book group, this week, but it was not the best discussion and I found some of the tangents immensely frustrating. It's only natural that the idea of concentration camps would bring up the current situation on our Southern Border. Unfortunately, that meant exposing some of our group's prejudices. I tried to bring up the fact that the path to citizenship is almost impossible for those who enter the country undocumented. "You mean the illegals," one of our members said. Yes, those who enter illegally but then become productive members of society can be here for 25 years, own several businesses, employ dozens of Americans, and still get deported because they don't have the option to become citizens, I thought. But, I didn't say that aloud because I was already feeling outnumbered, by that point. Immigration sadly is a complicated subject that people are determined to simplify. And, as one of our members mentioned, the news skims the surface and doesn't go in depth, complicating our lack of understanding by misleading viewers.

At any rate, we talked about the fact that The Tattooist of Auschwitz was unusual for a Holocaust book because there was a romance and therefore a happy ending, how some parts of the book felt a little exaggerated or questionable to some members, and whether or not Cilka was truly a collaborator or was she a victim of the Nazi who forced her to submit to him. I thought she was a rape victim; someone else called her a prostitute. I don't recall her getting anything in return but the chance to live, but it almost seemed like we read 4 different books. Not the best discussion we've ever had but I'm glad I read the book and I'm always glad I went to my F2F discussions because it's nice to hang out with other book lovers.


©2019 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.