74 pages • 2 hours read
Antonio IturbeThe Librarian of Auschwitz
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Power of Books to Give Life Meaning
The overriding theme of this story is the message that books are life-changing, empowering, and a way to grant solace to the Jewish prisoners who are at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. Books are a way to understand history, as well, and to determine how history changes and affects not just life as it is lived in the present, but the past and the future. Professor Morgenstern, who readers learn at the end of his life, is erudite, intelligent, and compassionate, perhaps says it best when he has a conversation one day with Dita: “Within their pages, books contain the wisdom of the people who wrote them. Books never lost their memory” (69).
Readers see this theme most powerfully through the collection of books that have landed with the prisoners of Block 31. It is perhaps Dita’s favorite book that lends power to the notion that books can explain the unexplainable while, at the same time, provide comedic relief and comfort. The irony with the book, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk, is that initially, the book is nearly banned by the prisoners for being scandalous, but Dita recognizes that it is really a powerful book that parodies war, thus showing how fruitless war is.
The so-called “living books” whereby the teachers (and other adults) tell the story of their favorite books, is also a large part of this theme. The implication is that all books are about life, and in some ways, the reader embodies the life of the book. Books, the author is saying, are akin to living things because they have the power to change minds, teach, and create laughter and tears. When Dita convinces one of the teachers to be a “living book” and tell her favorite story The Count of Monte Cristo, to the children, the teacher needs some convincing because she is shy. But when she says she will do it, Dita notices that “there’s a touch of joy in her voice […] and a new spring her step” (278). Books enlighten and give meaning to the lives of everyone, whether teacher or student.
Love Is Stronger Than War
The author’s emphasis on love, and the sacrifices prisoners and guards alike make for love, creates a thematic tension in the book that resolves in an important theme: that love is stronger and lasts longer than war and death. While the many love affairs flourish, or don’t flourish in the case of Fredy, the grave risk of expressing that love could signal the end of a life. But most of the prisoners are willing to risk their lives for love.
Both Viktor and Rudy undertake an escape due to love. Viktor escapes in an attempt to save Renee’s life, and Rudy escapes because once his beloved Alice is killed, there is no reason to stay or even live. Later, when Dita contemplates the strangeness of falling in love in a concentration camp and asks if it can be possible, she concludes that it is possible, “because Alice Munk and Rudi Rosenberg stand there defying the cold” (201).
Love in the concentration camp is not restricted to romantic love. The fierce attachments of parents to children and other family members appears throughout the novel. When both Dita and her mother disguise themselves to visit Dita’s father, their love of him is far greater than the risk of dying that comes with their perilous act. Later, when Liesl jumps Mengele’s selection lines, she offers the greatest expression of love for her daughter. A mother’s love is greater than death, her behavior shows, and sometimes with an act of devotion like Liesl’s, there are no words. For instance, after Liesl is safely hidden in Dita’s line, “without saying a word, they hold hands tightly and squeeze. And they look at each other and say everything with that glance” (362).
The platonic love between friends is also an important element in the narrative, as we witness in the powerful friendship between Margit and Dita. In many ways, the author shows that, through their friendship, they find the strength to continue living. This is both a symbolic theme that appears throughout the book and a literal one. When Margit and her father reunite (another example of familial love that changes Margit’s life), Margit promises Dita she will have a place to live. Dita understands this as a sister’s claim of love.
In War, Nothing Is as It Seems
The author makes a point of imbuing ambiguity into the narrative to demonstrate the opacity that war and death bring to prisoner’s lives. Nothing is ever quite what it seems. Relationships are often misunderstood, and while one set of people may see the truth, others do not.
Fredy is the first person to tell her that nothing is as it seems in Auschwitz. Dita is not sure what he means, but slowly over time she begins to understand. One of the first times she realizes that truth is elusive in the camp is when she figures out that Morgenstern is not really crazy; he was only acting that way to escape death. Professor Morgenstern reveals himself as the holy fool during his short time at Auschwitz, and Dita believes he is off his rocker. But in the end, just before his death, the professor makes it clear to Dita, his zany, clumsy-seeming grasp on reality is fake; his method of survival. Dita reflects back to Hirsh: “It’s just as Fredy said, “Not everything is as it seems to be” (231).
For instance, when Mengele gathers his twins for the so-called studies he performs, Mengele ingratiates himself to the children with candies and warmth. But the parents know the truth, and their lives are flipped upside down when Mengele comes for their children. We see, in another instance, the although Miriam Edelstein is quite clear about her view of the war, and even willing to accept its reality, she draws the line when it comes to the reality of her husband, who has been taken to a notorious prison that is widely known to be where prisoners die. She must believe that what Eichmann tells her is the truth lest all her hope is destroyed.
This theme—that nothing is as it seems—is perhaps most evident in Dita’s relationship with Fredy Hirsch. He is a hero, in her eyes, and when she thinks he is being traitorous, she sinks into despair and fear. But when she finds out the truth, she experiences disgust. This feeling is mitigated by Miriam whose wise words help Dita understand that sometimes reality hurts. After that, Dita goes on a quest to find out what happened with Hirsch in the end. But she doesn’t ever really find out the truth. She is left holding many reasons for his death in her heart, and she learns that sometimes she has to choose the truth she wants to believe.
