THE REST IS MEMORY

The haunting story of one real-life Polish teenager amplifies the infinite horror of Auschwitz.

Fourteen-year-old Czeslawa lives with her parents on a rural farm in the Zamość region of Poland. It's not an easy life. Czeslawa’s parents, who are Catholic, don't own the property they live on. Hitler’s program to rid Poland of Poles and repopulate the country with Germans is first executed in Zamość, and more than 100,000 residents are removed from the area, with the least fortunate sent to Auschwitz. When Czeslawa and her mother arrive in the camp and are stripped of their belongings, shaved of their hair, tattooed with identification numbers, and photographed for the camp’s extensive records, the reality of their dire circumstances—and their helplessness to do anything about it—becomes apparent. Czeslawa’s actual existence was documented by Wilhelm Brasse, the photographer at Auschwitz. Brasse, himself of Austrian and Polish descent and imprisoned at the camp, was chosen for the position due to his background in photography and his ability to speak German. Tuck became aware of Czeslawa when she happened upon Brasse’s obituary—which included three of his photos of the teen—in the New York Times. With myriad references to the historical realities of the Holocaust, the work beautifully interweaves Tuck’s imagined story of Czeslawa’s constrained life before the German occupation and the hideous conditions she faced during her short, brutal months at Auschwitz. Extensively annotated and researched, Tuck’s brief novel returns, time and time again, to the subject of memories, a theme alluded to in an epigraph consisting of a fragment of a Louise Glück poem. The author's skillful blending of facts and fiction reanimates the memory of one of the countless lost children of the Holocaust.

A painful, essential, unflinching memento.