Cilka's Journey: A Novel (Tattooist of Auschwitz Book 2) Kindle Edition

This book was phenomenal! I was totally engrossed from page one. The trials and tribulations of a young girl who becomes a woman under awful circumstances. It will break your heart and build it back up again.Cecelia Klein, Cilka, has been in Auschwitz, a German concentration camp for three years when the book opens and is being told she is free. But what happens next is what the rest of the story is about. The women she meets in the gulag are so brave, endure so much but make a life in spite of their new world. This quote from the book sums it up, “Cilka can see that she has gone from one cruel, inhuman place to another.” Not since reading the DIARY OF ANNE FRANK have I felt the hope but unabashed realization of life at that time albeit one before the camps and one after. There are hints of what life in a socialist country is like: the wealthy still get better treatment than the poor. Is that fair?There are so many people who might enjoy reading this book: those whose family have a connection to Auschwitz, German women, Jewish women, young women in general. I loved it and I’m none of these. It comes highly recommended. I volunteered to review an ARC of this book through NetGalley. I give it 10 stars!

I loved the author's previous book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, but I did not like this book and stopped reading it about halfway through. The first book was a true story based on interviews with a concentration camp survivor. The second book is based on an actual person who played a role in the first book, but most of the story is fictionalized, and I just couldn't stop thinking about how much of it was just made up. Also, even though the first book was about people in a concentration camp it managed to show how life always has beauty and hope in even the worst places. The second book was just depressing; this poor woman leaves a Nazi concentration camp but ends up in a Soviet gulag for years. Even though good things (like learning to be a nurse in the camp hospital) supposedly happen to her in this place none of the possible hope or joy in those experiences comes through in the writing.

The author exploited Cilka Klein with this intrusive and fictionalized account of her life.

"I just want to live. I need to feel the pain I wake up with every morning knowing I am alive, and my family aren't. This pain is my punishment for surviving and I need to feel it, live it."Auschwitz-Birkenau is being liberated and Cilka is ready to be free. Instead she is sent to the Russian Gulag in Siberia for sleeping with the Nazis.Sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.I taught Holocaust for many years and heard survivors/their families speak about the horrors they saw and went through. Never knew that so many were imprisoned again after the camps were liberated. Something that is obviously not talked about.Cilka Klein you will never be forgotten! She risked her life, courage, strength and even found love under brutal, devastating conditions.This book is a MUST read!! I now need to read The Tattooist Of Auschwitz.Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press/ Publishing and Heather Morris for allowing me the opportunity to read this phenomenal book! One I will never forget.

I read this novel without putting it down. Wow, what an upsetting, sad, traumatic and true story. I'd forgotten that The Tattoist of Auschwitz was a true story, as is Cilka's Journey. While this is not as historically accurate as the former novel, it is still based on a real life person and her brutal but unforgettable story. Cilka, a beautiful 16 year old of Czech origin, is sent to the camp, only to be handpicked as the sexual partner of two SS officers. In exchange for repeated rapes she is allowed to live and to enjoy some comforts. After the war she is again imprisioned, this time by the Soviets and sent to a prison in Siberia. She is again subjected to brutal rapes and maltreatment. She survives due to her wits and strength, and the kindness of female doctor, who picks her to help in the hospital and train as a nurse. The novel is heavy on brutality, making it very hard to read at times. It is also a story of friendships forged despite unthinkable conditions and ultimately love and the triumph of the human spirit. While the author takes some liberties in dramatizing the story, she is is clearly based on extensive research, making it highly worthwhile reading.

I was going to return this, but the return window closed today. Maybe I'll finish it just to see if the story ever progresses, or continues to remain stagnant.

Very good tale about an Auschwitz survivor sent to a Soviet gulag after the war as punishment for sleeping with her Nazi captors. I read this after “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” and found it much more compelling. I loved the protagonist and admired her ability to not only survive intolerable situations, but thrive! Recommend.

Cilka’s Journey and Tattooist of Auschwitz were so well written and so horrifying what the Germans and the Russians did to human beings. Amidst all the horror were so many that risked their life to help someone else. These books held my attention and were hard to put down!!

Pre ordered, dropped onto my kindle and read in 24 hours. This book is a hard but fascinating read. Having visited Auchwitz last month, you can put into perspective the hard life prisoners lived. Doing whatever they could to stay alive. So sad. A must read for all.

I was so looking forward to reading of Cilka's Journey to find out her story of how she came to be in Auschwitz.To say her journey was a traumatic one is an understatement,no one can really know what these people went through unless you walk in their shoes.Cilka has so many friends in the camp in russia and they support each other but there is always one bad egg and cilka is the victim of this womans hate.Cilka starts work in the camp hospital and becomes close to Dr Yelina who allows cilka to train as a nurse,the patients are treated with love and care by cilka and this is noticed when twice cilka and the dr save the life of the camp commandants daughter.I have really loved cilka's Journey which i think is worth more than 5* well done to Heather Morris.

I read this book in a day. I loved The Tattooist of Auschwitz, also reading it in a day. I could not wait to get my hands on this book and hoped it lived up to my expectations and it certainly did. I could not put this book down. Like The Tattooist of Auschwitz, I felt like I was walking beside Cilka, sharing all of her experiences with her, and constantly willing her on. Heather Morris knows how to suck you in to the story! As a woman, I felt the initial chapters were tough to read but it is important to recognise the horrors of what these women were made to experience. What a story of hope, grit and determination and another book for the ages. Heather Morris makes you feel that there is hope in the most hopeless of situations. A beautiful story, beautifully written that I would recommend to anyone. Like The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka’s Journey is a book that I will keep forever.

Cilka.whst a girl what a womanSurvival was all she had.it was her strength to live and live a life in hell that made her strong.along with millions of others in the same situation.i cant begin to imagine the hell on earth that these brave people lived for many yrs.but we must never forget either.the next generations must be shown what horrors the past generations were capable of .can it happen again ?yes and its up to us to prevent it.No human has the right to inflict the horrors of these war crimes on onother human no matter there race.colour religion.my heart goes out to the millions who suffered at the cruelty of men and women who thought they ruled the world.never again can it be allowed to happen.

I loved every word written what a strong girl/woman to survive everything thrown at her and still be able to find love