Cilka’s Journey By Heather Morris
Reviewed by: Melissa Friedlund, Reference Assistant
Genre: Historical Fiction
Suggested Age: Adult
What is This Book About? Cecilia Klein (also known as “Cilka”) was sent to Auschwitz when she was sixteen years old. Chosen by a German officer for sexual servitude and forced to run the dormitory for captive female Jews who were marked for execution, Cilka endured that horrendous existence until the Russians liberated Auschwitz. Declared a German collaborator by the Russians, Cilka was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor in a Gulag (prison camp) in Siberia. What followed were years of hardship and heartache interspersed with glimpses of compassion and kindness.
My Review: After reading The Tattooist of Auschwitz, I was interested in reading this follow-up novel. I found Cilka’s Journey to be a fascinating if somewhat unsettling read with its depiction of the conditions in Russian forced-labor camps of the mid-20th century. I knew of the cliché of someone being “sent to Siberia” as punishment, but I didn’t really know what that meant until now. The author explains after the novel how she pulled many situations from the stories of survivors of both the concentration camps and the Gulag system to create this story, so it is not a completely biographical account. Because of this, there has been some controversy surrounding the novel. Although the Gulags are closed, prison and forced-labor camps are unfortunately still a reality in the world today. As a mosaic of representative experiences in the Russian Gulag system, I feel this novel is a revelatory story that allows the reader a window into what life can be like in a prison camp.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Troubling, Eye-opening, Controversial
Give This a Try if You Like…The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Wine-Maker’s Wife, The Secrets That We Kept
Rating: 4/5
