She has featured in books herself. Alberto Manguel mentioned her “clandestine children’s library” in his book about the great libraries of the world. This piqued the interest of Spanish writer Antonio Iturbe who wrote The Librarian of Auschwitz, a semi-fictionalised version of Dita’s story, based on many conversations. An English translation is now available, published a few months ago. Totalmente recomendable, una novela gráfica que emana sentimiento y que te hace desear darle una oportunidad al libro en el que se basa. No esperaba que la historia de Dita, una de las supervivientes del Holocausto nazi, consiguiera despertarme tantas emociones. Sin duda, es una de esas obras que todavía hoy en día te hacen pensar en la crueldad que puede imperar en una sociedad cuando se emprenden acciones deleznables. Fourteen year old Dita is imprisoned with her family in an Auschwitz concentration camp. When she is asked by a Jewish leader to take on the role of handling the books for the makeshift school, Dita immediately agrees. Books are hard to come by, as many of them have been burned and deemed ‘blasphemous’ and ‘against the Fuhrer’, so Dita knows the job is a dangerous one. But her love of books and the joy she knows they can spread to others surpasses her fears. If you are looking for a read that's raw, based on a true untold story, powerful, Heartbreakingly authentic, thought provoking and a unique book, that once read will truly stay with you for a lifetime, then you must read THE LIBRARIAN OF Auschwitz! For many who survived incarceration and torture, Appelfeld’s silence became a way of being, without consolation or salve. The idea of cure, let alone transfiguration, belongs to a later generation of Holocaust excavators, those who had not experienced for themselves but wanted to speak as though they had, either to berate those they felt hadn’t learned its lessons or simply to profit from it in some way – peddling kitsch being the most profitable.

Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezín ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious books the prisoners have managed to smuggle past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the secret librarian of Auschwitz, responsible for the safekeeping of the small collection of titles, as well as the 'living books' - prisoners of Auschwitz who know certain books so well, they too can be 'borrowed' to educate the children in the camp.In November 1942, thirteen-year-old Dita and her parents were sent to the Terezin ghetto, and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1943. It took a few chapters to get that ‘hooked’ feeling...(part of it might’ve been my mental debate)....I’ve owned the ebook since it was released - but when one has read as many books about the holocaust as I have ( as many of us have)....we begin to tiptoe cautiously —

I loved the entire graphic novel. This is a true story, and it isn’t pretty. Teen readers need to know about the Holocaust, and the graphic novel format of this book will help bring the Holocaust to a larger audience. By 1941 they were evicted again from the rented flat where they lived with her grandparents. By now they were squashed into a room in an apartment shared by another family in the part of the city which in the past had been the Jewish ghetto.This novel is one that could easily be recommended or taught alongside Elie Wiesel’s Night and The Diary of Anne Frank and a text that, once read, will never be forgotten. VERDICT A hauntingly authentic Holocaust retelling; a must for YA collections." — School Library Journal, starred review, on The Librarian of Auschwitz Conocemos a Dita cuando tiene 14 años y ve que su mundo se empieza a desmoronar. La llegada de los nazis a Checoslovaquia y sus acciones para someter a los judíos harán que pase de tener una infancia normal a acabar en el infierno. Al igual que muchas otras personas, ella y sus padres son obligados a portar marcas que les señalan como judíos y se ven sumergidos en una situación de terror e incertidumbre. El futuro es incierto e intentar sobrevivir cada día es el único plan que se puede tener. Tras ser obligados a vivir en un gueto, acaban siendo trasladados a Auschwitz. Y nada volverá a ser igual. Aunque no entienden muy bien el motivo, Dita y su madre acaban en un barracón en el que las condiciones son ligeramente menos deplorables que en los demás. Y es ahí donde su amor por los libros la ayudará a convertirse en la bibliotecaria de Auschwitz... To be clear: it is not my argument that the Holocaust should be approached as though it is the Holy of Holies. I have been chased from the Temple myself, accused of defacing sacred memory in my novel Kalooki Nights by detailing the adolescent hero’s obsession with Ilse Koch, the notoriously sadistic wife of the commandant of Buchenwald. An early copy of Lord Russell of Liverpool’s The Scourge of the Swastika, complete with grainy, semi-sadomasochistic photographs, falls into the boy’s hands when he is of an age to be susceptible to its imagery. Thereafter, his imagination riots in the hell of Buchenwald. Nor is there blasphemy in disturbing the solemn hush with parody and satire. If we are to know and bear witness while accepting Levi’s injunction against “understanding”, we need all our wits about us. Sometimes the comedy just isn’t comic enough, as is the case in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator; or not funny at all as in Roberto Benigni’s film Life Is Beautiful; and sometimes it makes us squirm and fret, and then wonder why we shouldn’t, as in Martin Amis’s novel The Zone of Interest. But comedy can be a contentious and disruptive force whether or not its subject is the Holocaust. The important thing is to accept that seriousness can take many forms. Whatever Jojo Rabbit is up to, it can't be accused of spurious reverence In 1949 they moved to Israel with their young son and other survivor friends. They lived in Kibbutz Givat Chaim, near Hadera, where Otto was an English teacher and Dita worked in the shoe-repair shop. Later Dita also became an English teacher and they taught at the Hadassim school, east of Netanya, founded in 1947 for European Jewish refugee children.