Ella calls it Birchwood. A soft name, which sounds almost like a holiday camp. It's no holiday. Ella is starving, she's hit on a regular basis and she has seen things which make her soulless.
Lying about her age to get a job as a seamstress is her only hope. Every word, every sentence, your breath is held. The stakes are high. In other languages, Birchwood is known as Auschwitz‑Birkenau. Ella's life depends on her ability to toughen-up, and sew to other people's satisfaction.
I love how Ella names the other women after animals. Small, twitchy animals like rabbits, who might be shot in a second, or might run for miles. The big question is who will survive, and how?
This is a very difficult subject, but these seems like a sensitive retelling. It takes a very specific area of the Holocaust, (the workshops, and the thousands of skilled people whose lives were stolen,) and imagines their stories. I want to see how the story is handled, and I would love to read it alongside real testimonies.
The cover is very clever - the red ribbon could be an innocent reference to dressmaking, or it could be metaphoric of blood. Likewise, barbed wired which pins the ribbon down could refer to the huge number of people who were in responsible for what happened inside the camps. I want to know what the red ribbon means within the story.
Lying about her age to get a job as a seamstress is her only hope. Every word, every sentence, your breath is held. The stakes are high. In other languages, Birchwood is known as Auschwitz‑Birkenau. Ella's life depends on her ability to toughen-up, and sew to other people's satisfaction.
I love how Ella names the other women after animals. Small, twitchy animals like rabbits, who might be shot in a second, or might run for miles. The big question is who will survive, and how?
This is a very difficult subject, but these seems like a sensitive retelling. It takes a very specific area of the Holocaust, (the workshops, and the thousands of skilled people whose lives were stolen,) and imagines their stories. I want to see how the story is handled, and I would love to read it alongside real testimonies.
The cover is very clever - the red ribbon could be an innocent reference to dressmaking, or it could be metaphoric of blood. Likewise, barbed wired which pins the ribbon down could refer to the huge number of people who were in responsible for what happened inside the camps. I want to know what the red ribbon means within the story.