Curl Up With a Good Book!

On Christmas of 2014, my beautiful mom gave me one of the greatest gifts I could ever ask for: A book. "The Auschwitz Escape" by Joel. C. Rosenberg, to be exact. I am ashamed to say that it took me almost two years to pick it up as I kept other books on the forefront of my reading list. Last night I finished this amazing, enveloping story that is based on true events from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

There aren't a lot of books I consider true page turners, but this novel is an exception. Although it is 103 chapters with 461 pages, I read it within two weeks… Which is pretty good for me, at least!

I cracked open the pages in the middle of rocking a sleeping baby (to prevent me from sleeping, too!) and was hooked from that point on. The first chapter started off with a bang. Literally.

I had never known about the horrific overtaking of Sedan, France by the Nazis, but within the first few pages I felt like I was smack dab in the middle of it. From there, you follow the stories of fictional characters Jacob Weisz and Jean-Luc Leclerc (Luc for short), and are caught up in an intense, sickening war where killing a Jew was like smashing a bug in the Nazi's eyes. The two main characters wind up in the Auschwitz death camp where they are witnesses and victims to the camp's horrific torture. Desperate to flee from the atrocities and to plead on the behalf of political help, Jacob and Luc find themselves apart of an elaborate and dangerous plan to escape. One wrong move, and not only are their lives at stake, but the lives of hundreds of thousands.

I highly recommend this gripping book, but you must be prepared for pretty gruesome, heart-breaking stories… Page after page of them. There were several times I had to close the book, too overcome with emotion to continue. I had to even stop reading this before going to bed so I wouldn't be prone to having nightmares. At times I would whizz through the short chapters, daring to hope for a "comic relief" of sorts. But being a realistic depiction of a such a terrible place, I'm sad to say there were few glimpses of any happiness.

Although the majority of characters were fictitious, a lot of the twisted events that happened at Auschwitz were true. The author does a superb job of not just drawing you into the story, but landing you right there in the middle of the death camp, wondering if you were going to survive till the next chapter.

"The Auschwitz Escape"is a volume of treasure. It strengthened my faith in the human spirit, my knowledge in the events that happened during the Holocaust, and my belief that God is in ultimate control of even the darkest days.