Setting
During the Second World War, Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp was located in occupied Poland. Throughout the war, around 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, mainly Jews, ethnic Poles, Roma and other political prisoners. Most of them were either gassed or died of disease, starvation, beatings, exhaustion or execution. This is where the story of The Girl in the Striped Dress takes place.
Storyline
In Germany 1947, Frank Dahler a former kommandofuhrer at Auschwitz concentration camp was under trial before Denazification Tribunal for war crimes. He brings along his wife Helena, a former inmate of Auschwitz, as his witness. Helena has the appearance of a meek woman who is dependent on her husband. She narrates the heart-wrenching and poignant tale of her life at the concentration camp. When she was minutes away from being gassed, a stroke of luck saves her and she is sent to work in Kanada detail under the command of Frank Dahler. Surrounded by inhumanity and barbarity, Frank’s acts of kindness nudges Helena towards him. Love blossomed where there was seemingly no place for it.
My Thoughts
Once in a while, a book comes along your way that breaks your heart. The Girl in the Striped Dress is one such book that broke me from within, tore me apart and left me shattered. It is a gut-wrenching book. Such brutality and ghastliness are beyond my comprehension. I have read enough books about the holocaust but when you come across a book like this, you truly begin to understand the horrors of the holocaust. The details of the treatment meted out to the inmates made me squirm. Ellie Midwood has distinctly outlined her characters. She has left it on readers to conclude whether it was true love or the “Stockholm Syndrome”(a term which wasn't coined yet) for Helena. The narrative does not falter at any point and you are thrown right into the Auschwitz Camp, next to Helena where you can smell the death all around you. Even after finishing it some time back, this book still haunts me and would continue to do so for a long time to come. A book worth reading.
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