The format of this book is quite unusual; rather than being a traditional memoir, it’s a series of transcriptions of interviews done with Holocaust survivor Alina Bacall, her husband Leo (also a survivor), their children and one of Alina’s close friends from the camps.

They are transcribed literally so you see everyone’s hesitations, Alina and Leo’s imperfect English, everyone interrupting each other and interjecting things and comparing their memories to each other’s. It’s hard to understand at times but provides a sense of immediacy; you feel like you’re right there with them.

Some items of note:

1. Shortly after Alina arrived in Majdanek, one of the kapos there was bothering her friend, and Alina tried to intervene. The kapo hit her, and Alina hit back. When the guards found out they punished her with 29 lashes. I’m astonished she wasn’t shot.
2. Alina got rid of her tattoo at some point after the war. She went to see a surgeon for treatment of an injury that never healed from those 29 lashes in camps, and the doctor offered to remove of her tattoo while he was at it, free of charge. Although Leo was against the idea, she told the surgeon to go ahead.
3. Alina, unbeknownst to everyone including herself, was in the early stages of pregnancy when she arrived at Auschwitz. Once her condition became more apparent, Leo threw himself upon the mercy of a female kapo and begged her to save Alina, so the kapo put her in the maternity section with all the non-Jewish women. (Pregnant Jewish women were gassed.) Alina gave birth to a healthy son, but they wouldn’t let her anywhere near the baby. She heard his crying for four or five days, then she couldn’t hear it anymore. Because she never saw the baby dead, she occasionally wondered if it somehow survived, perhaps raised by one of the other mothers, but even as she said this she admitted this was unlikely in the extreme. ( )