MS Speaks
OTHER => BOOKS => Topic started by: agate on February 16, 2023, 09:56:45 pm
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Having known a number of survivors of the Holocaust, people who had been in concentration camps, I sometimes read accounts by or about such people, whose unique and horrific experience is in danger of fading from our memories now that most of these people have now died. This book is another factual account, or at least so far as I know it is factual. In some places it has been described as a novel. Some of the details might have been imagined by the author: "This is what might have happened." I wish authors would make it clear when they are departing from the factual record in this way but they often do not.
The book is The Sisters of Auschwitz: The True Story of Two Jewish Sisters' Resistance in the Heart of Nazi Territory by Roxane van Iperen (2018, 2022).
Janny and Lien Brilleslijper were two Jewish sisters who ingeniously managed to contrive ways of sheltering Jewish refugees who were destined for Hitler's concentration camps, and this is their story. Somewhat miraculously, both sisters survived the camps--and, at Bergen Belsen, witnessed the tragic deaths of Anne Frank and her sister Margot.
I am probably not qualified to say much more about this book as, in recorded form, it was difficult to follow, mainly because so many Dutch names of people and places were given but were difficult for a nonspeaker of Dutch to grasp. However, the Brilleslijper sisters must have been remarkable people who deserve to be remembered by a tribute such as this one.