Book Review - Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris

I was in this phase that I was really into WW2 fiction. But I had enrolled my friend Tanvi into reading a book with me. As I wanted her to not get bored, I chose this book as it had a female protagonist as well as plot about the lesser known Soviet labour camps. This is not a long book, roughly 330 pages, but it packed 13 years wonderfully into that limited space. I knew from the foreword that this had some disturbing events, but the extent to which those events went were unimaginable.

 Cecilia Klein was a 16-year-old Czechoslovakian Jew. She and her sister along with millions of Jewish girls were sent to Auschwitz II i.e. Birkenau Concentration Camp on pretext of working. Her Parents were also transported to concentration camp. There she caught the eye of a German high-ranking Officer, Schwarzhuber and was forced to become his sex slave in order to survive. She was made the overseer of Block 25, where women being sent to the gas chambers spent their last night. These positions of relative privilege helped her survive the camp, but also mentally traumatised her. At one point she even had to send her own mother to her death and had to watch her sister Magda die of typhus. She had very few friends in camp because she was seen as a Nazi collaborator. But she was very true to her friends Gita, Lale, Dana and Ivanka.

Cilka with her father and sister

Cilka in Auschwitz 

When Auschwitz was liberated by Russians, Cilka was very happy that she would finally be able to go home. But this happiness did not last for long, as she was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour for helping the Nazi’s. Her fault was sleeping with the Nazi’s. This reasoning was so fucked up, I mean obviously a young girl cannot prevent her captors from raping her. But as I read the book and came to know that some people were sent to the labour camps for stealing a bread or for marrying someone belonging to a different nationality, I understood that Stalin was no different from Hitler. He too like Hitler wanted the prisoners to do maximum work before they died. They were just dispensable items to him who were to be used and the thrown away. While the Nazi’s selected people to die based on their religion, Stalin chose people who were educated and could be revolutionaries in the Soviet occupied territories, who were outliers and could bring about a change in the Russian society, or those who were prisoners of war and fought against Russia.

Though the conditions in the Vorkuta Labour Camp were better than those in Auschwitz, it was still a propaganda to control people. Here too Cilka tried her best to survive and got a better position as a hospital nurse. She befriended Josie, Natalya and Olga. Elena was an enemy who later turned into an ally. But she also had a blackmailer called Hannah who threatened to expose her job in Auschwitz to the other women in their block. Cilka formed a sort of trustship with her supervisor Dr. Yelena Georgiyevna and was able to later tell her about her life in Auschwitz. The most horrifying event came at the night, when men stormed into the women blocks and raped. Boris who is Cilka’s protector develops a one-sided attraction to her and she pretends to like him in return. This side of Cilka’s character to pretend attraction to men whom she didn’t like be it Schwarzhuber or Boris bothered me a bit, but as I understood the alternative was being manhandled I forgave her for her acts.  

The conditions of the babies born in the camp as well as their separation from their mothers at the age of two was appalling. This according to me was being done so that the kids when they grew up should have no connection with their roots and also so that they should not know the horrific face of the Soviet policies. Cilka is very brave as well, which is proved during her time in the ambulance duty.

Cilka for a long time tries not to fall in love as she knows that the camp holds no future for love. But she nonetheless falls for Aleksandr, a Czech prisoner in the camp. The interactions between him and Cilka when he is recuperating at the hospital are sweet. The last scene on the train when they both reunite in the train to Prague made me very happy. It’s great that Cilka married the love of her life and lived happily for the rest of it. Overall a good and interesting book which deserves a 4.8/5.

 

                                                                Cilka with her husband