There Is a Place on Earth: A Woman in Birkenau

by Giuliana Tedeschi

An Italian Jew recounts her experiences in the Nazi concentration camp, Birkenau, in April of 1944, combining a discussion of the camp's destruction of the feminine personality with images that reaffirm her humanity in the face of abomination.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, War, Holocaust

Paperback

Published January 28, 1993

Reviews

[chucklesthescot · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a strange book. It dealt mostly with the woman's camp and work detail at Birkenau, the fear of selections and the way all the nationalities were fighting with each other or looking down on others. You don't hear as much about the Nazis themselves, just in camp cruelty against each other. There were good bits in the story which showed the type of work the women did and what conditions were like.
My real bug bear is that entire sections are written in the language of the people who are talking and no translation is given, so at times I was saying 'what are they actually talking about?' It was very frustrating. I don't speak Italian or Hungarian or Greek so entire parts of pages were totally useless for me to read. You have no idea what the story or joke is! Also she seems to jump back and forward in time which gets very confusing. She'll tell you of an incident then in a later chapter will go back and explain how the incident occurred. Very confusing at times. It was an ok read but not as good as I hoped it would be.