A brutal and necessary read. There’s no shortage of historical account of life inside the Nazi’s concentration camps, and Macadam decided to focus on the accounts of the first 999 girls who arrived in Auschwitz. She follows the group from their lives before the camps all the way through the infamous death-marches and subsequent camp liberations. The decision to narrow her focus to this group of women results in a fascinating look at the creation and destruction of Aushwitz. She also is clear-eyed about the ethical choices each of the girls grappled with while imprisoned, and how the survivors choose to live with that later on. I also respected that she brought us back again and again to the fact that, not only were these women prisoners, but they were slaves, and slavery as a concept is often forgotten in how we talk about the camps.
The only down-side to Macadam’s retelling is that it was easy to get lost in the cast of characters and lose track of the storylines we were following, something that is mostly due to the destruction of camp records before liberation.
Would recommend this to anyone who is interested in the role women are forced to play in warfare and as prisoners of war, as well as to those who enjoy reading about ethics and the way trauma can impact our view of morality.