Pigen fra Auschwitz - Morten Vestergaard

Title: Pigen fra Auschwitz (The Girl From Auschwitz)
Author: Morten Vestergaard
Genre: Non-fiction, WW2
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 205
Date read: March, 2012

Arlette Levy Andersen lived in the concentration camps Birkenau and Auschwitz for more than a year near the end of World War 2. For four decades Arlette didn't even tell her own Jewish family what she experienced there.

In "The Girl From Auschwitz" Arlette finally opens the doors to the horrible experiences because she feels obliged to do so. "Soon nobody will be left to tell about what happened," is her way of expressing it. Arlette tells about her childhood in Paris, being arrested at her university, being deported in stock cars and the stay in the concentration camps. About surviving. About staying quiet and keeping her memories to herself. And about the love that took her to Denmark after the war, where she got married and made a new life for herself.


One of the most moving books I've read about concentration camps and WW2. I couldn't not read it in one sitting, and put it down with a heavy sigh and tears in my eyes.

What makes this book so powerful is that Arlette's story isn't unique. She is merely one of 1,3 million prisoner's of Auschwitz, but unlike 1,1 million others, she got out of there alive.

I'll never understand the Holocaust (nor do I really want to, actually!). Killing people in active war is one thing, but slaughtering people like that, in cold blood, is quite another. How could the soldiers make themselves do it? How could they live with themselves afterwards? I guess they must somehow have convinced themselves that they weren't proper humans, and that killing them was no worse than killing animals... at least, that's the only explanation I can find.

I'm glad Arlette decided to speak out, and agreed to have this book written. Granted, it didn't tell me anything about Auschwitz that I didn't already know, but hearing it from somebody who experienced the terrors herself and survived makes for a very powerful story.

Unfortunately "The Girl From Auschwitz" hasn't been translated to other languages.