Beyond the Wire
There is no shortage of novels about the Holocaust, each of them recounting the unspeakable horrors of Nazi extermination camps and the suffering of millions of Jews and others deemed subhuman by the Nazis. What is frequently overlooked in these novels, however, is the story of those prisoners who revolted against the Nazis, even when knowing their resistance was futile and could only end in their deaths.
Shipman seamlessly blends historical fact with fiction as he recounts the 1944 revolt at Birkenau in the Auschwitz concentration camp in which 250 prisoners attempted to escape. Hundreds of miles behind German lines, surrounded by electrified fences, guard towers, hundreds of heavily armed SS soldiers, and an unfriendly civilian population, the revolt was doomed for failure. A few managed to escape the camp but were shortly recaptured. No one managed to gain freedom.
That revolt is at the heart of this novel. When Jakub Bak arrives at Auschwitz, he is pressed into service as a Sonderkommando whose job is to sort through the clothing of prisoners killed in the gas chamber looking for valuables, then to move the bodies from the chamber to the crematorium. Only two things keep Jakub alive—his promise to his murdered father to survive and his love for Anna, a prisoner in the women’s camp.
As the plot to revolt begins to take shape, Jakub is reluctantly drawn into it, as is Anna. While the plotters face impossible odds, they must also face the reality of Jewish informers who would sell them out to better their own circumstances and chances for survival. This is an authentic and gripping novel one should not miss; it is highly recommended.
