Today I’m joining the blog tour for Stories Of Hope From Auschwitz. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the blog tour and to the publisher for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

An uplifting collection of real-life stories of the rebels, resistance fighters, saboteurs, escapees and survivors who held on to hope through the horrors of the Holocaust

When Auschwitz was liberated in 1945, after the horror of one of history’s greatest atrocities, the world rejoiced. Although seven thousand people had survived this ordeal, the camp had also been witness to countless others who had resisted, sabotaged and even escaped from their captors. Some fought for their freedom or against injustice, and others disrupted Nazi operations. Then there were those who found ways to hold on to hope and positivity and spread it to their fellow inmates – a source of light in one of the world’s darkest places.

This book celebrates those heroes of Auschwitz, telling the inspiring true stories of the ordinary prisoners who became symbols of hope and defiance. At turns touching and uplifting, these stories show the best of humankind and are testament to the incredible resilience and bravery that shines through even in the toughest times.

Review:

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m relatively uneducated about the Holocaust so I really wanted to read Stories Of Hope From Auschwitz to gain a greater understanding of what happened and what the people in the concentration camps went through. As you might expect, it’s not easy to read at all and, although some of the stories are hopeful, the majority of them are deeply harrowing and really affected me emotionally. 

The chapters in Stories Of Hope From Auschwitz are mostly quite short, and this does make it more accessible for readers like me who don’t have a great deal of historical knowledge. There is a huge breadth of experience in these stories – from young children to older people, from artists and musicians to medical practitioners and more. It was fascinating to learn about how so many people had contributed to the survival of others and how they had been able to ensure their own survival. The breadth does mean that the writing is not always as in depth as it could be, but I still got a strong sense of how horrific their experiences were. 

I was pleased to see that each chapter followed the subjects until later in their life, so we were able to see what had happened to them following the end of the war. 

Stories Of Hope From Auschwitz isn’t the type of book I would normally read, but I will be thinking about the subjects of this book for a long time to come. 

Stories Of Hope From Auschwitz is available from Amazon.

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