Reviews for Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In this follow-up to the widely read The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2018), a young concentration camp survivor is sentenced to 15 years' hard labor in a Russian gulag.The novel begins with the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945. In the camp, 16-year-old Cecilia "Cilka" Kleinone of the Jewish prisoners introduced in Tattooistwas forced to become the mistress of two Nazi commandants. The Russians accuse her of collaboratingthey also think she might be a spyand send her to the Vorkuta Gulag in Siberia. There, another nightmarish scenario unfolds: Cilka, now 18, and the other women in her hut are routinely raped at night by criminal-class prisoners with special "privileges"; by day, the near-starving women haul coal from the local mines in frigid weather. The narrative is intercut with Cilka's grim memories of Auschwitz as well as her happier recollections of life with her parents and sister before the war. At Vorkuta, her lot improves when she starts work as a nurse trainee at the camp hospital under the supervision of a sympathetic woman doctor who tries to protect her. Cilka also begins to feel the stirrings of romantic love for Alexandr, a fellow prisoner. Though believing she is cursed, Cilka shows great courage and fortitude throughout: Indeed, her ability to endure traumaas well her heroism in ministering to the sick and woundedalmost defies credulity. The novel is ostensibly based on a true story, but a central element in the bookCilka's sexual relationship with the SS officershas been challenged by the Auschwitz Memorial Research Center and by the real Cilka's stepson, who says it is false. As in Tattooist, the writing itself is workmanlike at best and often overwrought.Though gripping, even moving at times, the novel doesn't do justice to the solemn history from which it is drawn. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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