Dita Kraus: The Librarian of Auschwitz

“Don’t let yourself be influenced by hate mongers, always check facts and form your own opinion.”

Dita Polachova (b. 1929) is now famous as the heroine of the best-selling novel The Librarian of Auschwitz, which I’ve just finished and highly recommend.

Dita grew up in Prague to loving and well-educated Jewish parents. In an interview, she revealed that she didn’t realise she was Jewish until she was eight when she saw a document at school which stated so. However, her carefree childhood was ruined in March 1939 when the Nazis invaded Prague and imposed harsh restrictions on the Jewish community. Her father quickly lost his job as a liar and the family were evicted and were sent to a Jewish ghetto in 1942.

When Dita was thirteen, her family were transported to the most famous of Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. Her father was separated (to die of starvation in 1944), and she and her mother were housed in the woman’s barracks. They were placed in a camp known as Family Camp BIIb, which was built as a prop for Nazi propaganda showing the camp as a peaceful work camp rather than a place of torture and extermination. Within this camp was a children’s block (#31) overseen by the notorious “Angel of Death”, Dr Mengele, who is now famous for his grotesque medical experiments on Auschwitz inmates. Block 31 was bravely suggested and run by a young leader called Fredy Hirsch, who saved the children from the gruelling work and the elements the adults were exposed to. Hirsch was Dita’s childhood sports instructor, whom she had also met in the ghetto, and he was an inspirational figure in her life. While inmates were not considered children above the age of 14, Fredy persuaded the SS to allow those age 14-16 to work as “assistants” in the family camp. This allowed Dita to become the camp’s librarian at the age of 14.

Dita was given responsibility to look after a small number of books which had been found among the confiscated luggage of the arrivals in Auschwitz. They were a random selection, in poor condition, and some in languages which few of the prisoners understood. Books were forbidden by the authorities, and had to be hidden at great personal risk to Dita – who was forced to hide them on her person on several occasions for which she could have faced death. She herself said: “The educators in the Kinderblock were the greatest heroes of all,” she adds. “They knew they would die, yet dedicated themselves to the children, to make their last weeks as pleasant as they could.”

The tragic death of Mr Hirsch was traumatic for Dita and the other children, many whom were themselves murdered in the gas chambers after six months – once they had served their purpose as living propaganda. Block 31 was the only block not to have had a “natural” death during these months – perhaps showing the power that education can have in inspiring children to stay alive when depression and disease overtook others.

While others in the camp were sent to their death, Dita and her mother were among 1000 women transferred to a work camp in Hamburg and onto Bergen-Belsen: “Even without gas chambers, the camp was a horrific killing machine, where the starving prisoners died by the thousands.” The British troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 confronted piles of dead and rotting corpses and thousands of sick and starving prisoners who were little more than breathing skeletons. Dita and her mother were ill with typhus which had already killed thousands in the camp. Dita recovered, but her mother died shortly after the liberation of the camp, a few week’s short of Dita’s sixteenth birthday.

When asked how she explained her survival, she answered: Perhaps an initial good constitution and luck, luck and, again, luck.” With her new freedom, Dita returned to Prague orphaned and alone: “I had no home. All I had were a few pieces of clothing tied in a blanket and a few packets of cigarettes. I was almost the only survivor of my family.” However, just a few weeks after returning to Prague, Dita met her future husband Otto Kraus – an instructor from block 31 to whom she had never spoken. Dita was given a home by her fellow survivor Margit, in the town of Tepice. During this time, Otto wrote to her everyday – writing a year later he said: “Why don’t you come to Prague? I can’t love you from a distance.” They married in 1947. They were united by their love of books, and Otto published his own book detailing his experiences.

In 1949 they moved to Israel with their young son and both Dita and Otta became English teachers at a school for Jewish refugees. The now- widowed Dita continues to share her story in the hope of educating people about the horrors which occurred and the danger of hate-mongering.

The Librarian of Auschwitz is a really beautiful telling of the life of a really remarkable woman. It somehow brings to life the horrors and unspeakable suffering inflicted upon the victims of Nazi persecution within and beyond Auschwitz. It shows the complexities of both the victims and the perpetrators. I visited Auschwitz as part of my HET training so I could picture it all too vividly, but the writing really takes you back to the shoes of those pour souls.  

Of course it shows the amazing strength of that 14 year old girl who lost everything and yet faced it with more courage than most men three times her age. I cried reading her story, and of those around her, but it was also a weirdly life-affirming tale. In the obvious ways of course, but also because it shows the power of literature and reading. Books like this are so important so that we do not forget the suffering, and more importantly, learn from it so that it never happens again. 

Thank you Dita for your bravery then, and for sharing your story with us now. You’re a bigger hero to me than any soldier ❤️

If you can’t read the whole book, I shared some of my favourite quotes from it on my Instagram: @herstoryrevisited 🙌🏻