A review by zwayervin
Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo

5.0

Incredibly depressing and very very good. I find that many Holocaust books retroactively frame and apply a certain structure to the whole experience--not on purpose, I think, but for the sake of trying to explain what happened to people who weren't there. Delbo is good at recreating the experience and emotion of the Holocaust without ascribing a sensible plot that wasn't there in reality. It was crazy and it was awful and in many ways it did not end with the war. In fact, in many ways Delbo did not actually survive Auschwitz, and perhaps no survivor did. Very powerful book.