The Nazis Knew my Name : : a Remarkable Story of Survival and Courage in Auschwitz

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Call Number: 940.531 Bl
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	940.531 Bl	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"Originally published in Australia in 2021 by Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited"--Title page verso.
"In March 1942, at the age of 25, kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger was deported from her hometown in Slovakia along with 998 other young women. They were some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Very few would survive the next three years until liberation. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in day-to-day charge of the accommodation blocks and even the camps at large-so called Blockalteste and Lageralteste respectively-they could both reduce the number of guards required to use these "leaders" to deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such Jewish prisoner selected for leadership. Like many others during the war she found herself constantly treading a fine line: how to save lives-if only a few at a time-while avoiding being too "soft" and likely sent to the gas chambers. Through her own inner strength and ingenuity, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and some of Auschwitz's most notorious Nazi senior officers. Based on Magda's own personal account and completed by her daughter's extensive research, this awe-inspiring story offers us incredible insight into human nature under the pressure to survive, the power of resilience, and the goodness that can shine through even in the most horrific of conditions"-- Provided by publisher.

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Powerful beyond words submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 23, 2022, 11:02pm This is the perfect companion to Art Spiegelman’s _Maus_. Where that was a graphic novel-format biography by the son of a grumpy man who survived Auschwitz by figuring out how he could protect himself, _The Nazis Knew My Name_ is a memoir (co-written by the daughter) of a girl who decided that the only way to deal with Auschwitz was to be as kind as possible and to save as many of the other girls as she could. Magda Hellinger ended up being selected by the Nazis to take various leadership positions in the camp (at one time she was in charge of 30,000 prisoners). For three years, she used what power she had to hide sick girls, to get supplies, to convince the guards to be less vicious, to send girls to less dangerous assignments, to keep attention off their area, and used a hundred other tricks to try to keep her charges alive for another day, to keep them “out of the chimney.”

I cannot even put words on how amazing Magda was, and how powerful this book is. If you only read a handful of books about surviving the concentration camps, this should absolutely be one of them.