Choosing a new book once you have finished a particularly good one is always a difficult task.
I usually end up starting several books at the same time and abandoning those which fail to engage me.
While on the hunt for that next adventure, I found myself committing the ultimate crime: choosing a book by its cover. Sometimes I even find myself underestimating a book merely because it is petite in size. Admit it, this is a crime we have all been guilty of.
By Athena Singer,
Senior Staff Writer
Choosing a new book once you have finished a particularly good one is always a difficult task.
I usually end up starting several books at the same time and abandoning those which fail to engage me.
While on the hunt for that next adventure, I found myself committing the ultimate crime: choosing a book by its cover. Sometimes I even find myself underestimating a book merely because it is petite in size. Admit it, this is a crime we have all been guilty of.
�The Dawn of Hope,� while only 83 pages in length, is a powerful memoir of a young political prisoner held in a concentration camp during World War II. The author, Genevi�ve De Gaulle Anthonioz, was just 19 when she joined the French resistance against the German occupation in 1940.
She was arrested three years after and thrown into the worst prison in France. After a short stay, she was then shipped by cattle car to the Nazi Death Camp, Ravensbr�ck, where she became number 27.327.
What I found interesting about this particular Holocaust memoir was the change in perspective.
Anthonioz was a Christian who was considered a political prisoner of the Nazis. She spent most of her year and a half imprisonment in solitary confinement.
Five decades later, she finally was able to put her experiences in writing within the span of just three weeks. The result is a story that is told with honesty and feeling.
Through her eyes, the reader experiences the devastation of Ravensbr�ck from an atypical point of view. She tells of the small things she did to keep her soul intact. It was these tiny gestures that carried her through unimaginable evil until the end of the war.
�The Dawn of Hope� is as powerful as it is minute. Written in 1998 and translated from the original French, this novel is a must for Holocaust self-education.
In the short amount of time it takes to read, I believe that the reader will experience an array of emotions from despondency to hope.
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