birkenau (concentration camp)

Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka quickly learns that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival. When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka. She is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a Siberian prison camp. In Siberia, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, including the unwanted attention of the guards. But when she meets a kind female doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing and begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions"--Adapted from publisher description.

Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, where the commandant immediately notices how beautiful she is. Forcibly separated from the other women prisoners, Cilka quickly learns that power, even unwillingly taken, equals survival. When the war is over and the camp is liberated, freedom is not granted to Cilka. She is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a Siberian prison camp. In Siberia, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, including the unwanted attention of the guards. But when she meets a kind female doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing and begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions"--Adapted from dust jacket.

"As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz, as readers may recognise it. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death. And this place is all about survival. Ella seeks refuge from this reality, and from haunting memories, in her work and in the world of fashion and fabrics. She is faced with painful decisions about how far she is prepared to go to survive. Is her love of clothes and creativity nothing more than collaboration with her captors, or is it a means of staying alive?"--OCLC.