The Girl in the Striped Dress by Ellie Midwood
(previously published as "Auschwitz Syndrome")
Genre: Historical fiction, WW2, Wartime fiction, Holocaust
Read: 7th August 2021
Audible
UK
UK
Published: 9th August 2021
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Auschwitz, 1942: This unforgettable novel, based on a true story, brings to life history’s most powerful tale of forbidden love. Set within the barbed wire of Auschwitz, a man and a woman fall in love against unimaginable odds. What happens next will restore your faith in humanity, and make you believe in hope even where hope should not exist.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he whispered, pressing a note into her hand. Her entire body trembled when she read it: I am in love with you.
Helena steps off the cattle train onto the frozen grounds of Auschwitz. She has twenty-four hours to live. Scheduled to be killed tomorrow, she is not even tattooed with a prison number. As the snow falls around her, she shivers, knowing that she has been sentenced to death for a crime she didn’t commit.
When a gray-clad officer marches towards Helena and pulls her away, she fears the worst. Instead, he tells her that it’s one of the guard’s birthdays and orders her to serenade him.
Inside the SS barracks the air is warm, thick with cigarette smoke and boisterous conversation. After she sings to the guard, Franz, he presses a piece of cake into her hands––the first thing she has eaten in days. On the spot, he orders her life to be saved, forever changing the course of her fate.
What follows is a love story that was forbidden, that should have been impossible, and yet saved both of their lives––and hundreds of others––in more ways than one.
Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Choice, and The Orphan Train will be utterly entranced by this unputdownable page-turner. This completely heartbreaking yet beautifully hopeful novel shows that love can survive anything and grow anywhere.
*Previously titled: Auschwitz Syndrome
MY REVIEW:
I am excited to be taking part in the #BooksOnTour #BlogTour for Ellie Midwood's heart-rendering tale THE GIRL IN THE STRIPED DRESS.
Where do I even begin to outline my thoughts the horrors that Ellie Midwood has recounted in this spectacular and beautiful story? How does one review such a telling and heartbreaking tale? THE GIRL IN THE STRIPED DRESS is a fictional tale based on the true story of an SS officer at Auschwitz and the young Jewish woman he fell in love with.
"He was an SS man and she was an inmate and a Jew."
Germany 1947: American psychiatrist Dr Hoffman is in charge of the Denazification process of former officers facing imprisonment for their crimes when a former inmate of the death camp Auschwitz has brought to his attention a guard who was brutal in his punishment of a particular inmate and even now continues his hold over her.
Now two years after the war ended, Dr Hoffman is present to witness former SS officer Frank Dahler brought to trial for crimes against humanity with his wife as his only defence. Is he innocent of the crimes for which he's been charged? Or is he a monster who has hidden his savagery well with a cruel hold over the woman who was once a prisoner and is now his wife? As he clasps her hand and gives it a squeeze, is it an element of control or a gesture of love? Those present at the trial have no idea of the torrent that is about to unfold as Dahler's wife begins to testify in his defence. The tangled web of love, dependence and heartache within the confines of Auschwitz of something so forbidden that could have seen them both shot.
Appearing pliant and incredibly timid, Helena Dahler leans heavily against her husband relying on him for support. Her eyes are downcast and she barely looks up throughout the court process. Dr Hoffman is puzzled by her demeanour and yet he finds her behaviour to be fascinating. Is she a victim of abuse being controlled by her husband? Is he a monster or was he a shelter from the storms that ravaged the death camp, keeping her safe from harm? Had she learned to seek him as her only source of strength and comfort? Did she marry him out of fear or repayment for his kindness? Did she truly love her husband or was she with him out of fear?
Helena is a Slovakian Jew who arrives at Auschwitz in March 1942 to be gassed the following day along with the many others with whom she has travelled. However, the night before she and a few other women are chosen to sing for an SS guard for his birthday. The officer, Franz Dahler, was enamoured by the young woman from the first moment he set eyes on her. Although she was scheduled to die in the gas chamber the following day, Franz had her seconded to his work detail in Kanada. Here life was not as harsh as in the rest of the camp. The inmates got to keep their hair, they ate marginally better and their lodgings were slightly improved. But they were still subjected to punishments from the whip if they so much as stepped out of line.
At first Helena rebuffed Dahler's kindness, believing him to be just another Nazi. He wrote her notes which she destroyed in anger, he hovered over her workstation which she found unsettling, he spoke to her with kindness which she saw as a trap. His behaviour toward her was disconcerting and she refused to be taken in by him. But then over time, she discovered that Franz Dahler was not like other SS guards. His kindness was not laced with malice. Nor did he have an ulterior motive. And not once did he force himself on her when other guards took their pleasures where they chose.
Over the course of her imprisonment, Franz saved her not once but three times from the gas chamber and through their shared experiences they formed an unbreakable bond. And in a place where there is so little hope, love blossoms. This is one of the reasons that Franz finds himself on trial. An SS guard, a sworn officer of the Reich, who was taught to be a natural Jew-hater...finds himself helping inmates and in love with a Jewess. This only exacerbated his case.
Brought to the attention of the court via Dr Hoffman by a former Auschwitz inmate, Andrej Novak who was also Slovakian, he fought against Dahler and Helena's supposed relationship and marriage believing Helena to be under duress and that Franz would forever be a danger to her. He presented evidence of many occasions in which Dahler had whipped or abused Helena in front of other guards and inmates, humiliating her. He also firmly believes that the couple were not in love and that Dahler forced himself on Helena with her timid behaviour currently evidence of his control over her. But as Hoffman listens and observes the actions of both Franz and Helena, he is not so sure.
Previously published as "Auschwitz Syndrome", THE GIRL IN THE STRIPED DRESS is a powerful tale of true love surviving against all odds. In a place where there is no love, no hope, no kindness...Franz and Helena defied those odds. And while it is a heartwrenching love story, it will not be the only memory you will take away with you upon turning that final page. I have read many books set in death camps like Auschwitz but this one is not like any of those. Yes, we see the brutality of the guards and overseers, the hunger, the sickness, the stench of incinerated bodies, the propaganda of lies and deception, the inhumanity of it all...but in the midst of it, is a love story like no other. A forbidden love that would have seen them both put to death.
I cannot begin to describe the huge range of emotions that flooded through me as I read this book. Having not read Ellie Midwood before, the experience is such a powerful one that will have me seeking out further tales from the Holocaust that I know she has told.
THE GIRL IN THE STRIPED DRESS begins with the Denazification Tribunals in which Dr Hoffman plays a part afterwhich follows Helena's testimony of her time in Auschwitz told in her first person narrative. Throughout the story, intermittent chapters from Franz's trial is inserted as Hoffman seeks the opinion of another psychiatrist. There are a couple of chapters told by Franz with which Helena was not privy before the verdict is handed down in the final chapter. The plotline was cleverly presented through the various perspectives that unfolded skillfully through Midwood's capable hand.
This heartwrenching tale of true love that is based on the true story of Franz Wunsch and Helena Citronova, with their surnames changed for the book, is one that will remain with me for some time. Amidst the horrors, the heartbreak and the unimaginable inhumanity, a glimmer of hope shines with the miracle of love found between two unlikely people.
This is an amazing read that I highly recommend. Pick it up. Read it. You won't be sorry.
*Previously titled: Auschwitz Syndrome
I would like to thank #EllieMidwood, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheGirlinTheStripedDress in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.
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