El 25 de marzo de 1942, cientos de jóvenes mujeres judías y solteras abandonaron sus hogares para subir a un tren. Estaban impecablemente vestidas y peinadas, y arrastraban sus maletas llenas de ropa tejida a mano y comida casera. La mayoría de estas mujeres y niñas nunca habían pasado ni una noche fuera de casa, pero se habían ofrecido voluntariamente para trabajar durante tres meses en época de guerra. ¿Tres meses de trabajo? No podía ser algo tan malo. Ninguno de sus padres habría adivinado que el gobierno acababa de vender a sus hijas a los nazis para trabajar como esclavas. Ninguno sabía que estaban destinadas a Auschwitz.

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There were so many people included in this book and I’m afraid and sad that at times I lost track which person was which, despite frequent reminders.

At the beginning in particular I noticed that too much conjecture had to be done the way this story was told. Yes in a way the account can make the reader feel closer to the girls and young women but in another way it’s distancing not knowing how close to reality the account was. As the account went on the book got better and better and it was obvious that the accounts were genuine and there were plenty of details and well as getting a general sense of how things were. Truly horrific. The more I got into the book the more I “enjoyed” it and the more it became a page-turner.

Perfectly done were the testimonies of those who survived, of the family members of those who died, and completely but unfortunately realistically the mystery of what happened to some of the females on this first transport.

Many wonderful photographs are included. There is a large section of them in the middle of the book and there are also others scattered throughout the book.

There are several helpful maps.

I’m glad that this account exists. Much of it was emotionally difficult to read but I’m glad I read it. It’s a worthy addition to non-fiction Holocaust literature and not for the first time only after I read the account did I realize it’s yet another necessary one.

I do not fully understand how some people can withstand so much pain (physical and psychological) and so much terror and that goes for the survivors and the way too many who died at some point, whether early on or toward the end. This account does not shy away from the damage that lasts in people who have been through extreme trauma.

4-1/2 stars

My next book will not be but now/soon I need some lighter reading material.

I need to add that I have read hundreds of Holocaust books, nonfiction and historical fiction, and I had known nothing about this transport and I also learned a tremendous amount of information I never knew before about day-to-day life in the camp (camps and things about life before and after and after the war too) which included very diverse experiences. As far as each individual and relationship that was covered I learned a lot by reading about them. ( )

When I requested this book from the Queens Public Library I thought enough time had passed since I last read a Holocaust book, and that I would be able to manage it emotionally. But... when I picked up the book from the shelf on my living-room side table I doubted myself; had second thoughts. I decided to give it a try. I read the Foreword and just from the painful summary it provided I knew I would not be able to complete the book. But I did read the Author's Note.

I cannot, at this point in my life, at this time, read another book about deliberate, indefensible human cruelty, abuse, debasement, agony, wholesale murder of millions of regular people, innocents, who harmed no one. And all because of fear, misunderstanding, jealousy and irrational hate. And even worse is that many of these haters were RAISED, ENCOURAGED, COERCED, and BRAIN-WASHED into this egregious behavior. They weren't born hating, they were TAUGHT to hate others based on deceptive, false, fabricated reasons.

I can't.

Survival. That is the heart of this moving book. For the young women of the first transport, leaving their homes in Slovakia to do “government service” in 1942, to survive meant to withstand physical, mental, and emotional hardships and cruelty. It meant finding the will to keep living. Starving, sick (typhus, tuberculosis), abused, dehumanized, these young women lived. Those that survived the first 6 months, and then over the next two years somehow avoided dying from illness, being shot by the SS for fun, dying from cruel sterilization experiments, and ‘selection’ for the gas chamber, were ultimately part of the final death March. They were not freedom fighters or combatants or troublemakers. They were innocent civilians dragged from their families to be tortured and killed. The fact that any survived to bear witness is a miracle.

This book is an important addition to the historical record of the Holocaust. While we are regularly reminded of the numbers — how many people fit in a cattle car (more than cattle and yet weighed less), how many people were registered in camp and how many went straight to the gas chamber, how many days or weeks or months the girls were assigned to which building, how many Jews remained in a village, town, or city after the authorities rounded people up for transport — that isn’t what makes this book special. The author uses interviews and archives of testimony to help the reader imagine what it was like for these young women. Each difficult choice... Should a person starve or break the rule of kashrut against eating horse meat? Should she fast on Yom Kippur when she is already starving? Should she celebrate Passover and recite the words of freedom when she is a slave? Should she have sex with the SS officer or be shot for refusing? Should she break god’s law by killing herself rather than allowing the SS to take her life? Considering these questions, describing the unbearable choices .. that is the power of this book. ( )