74 pages • 2 hours read
Antonio IturbeThe Librarian of Auschwitz
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Books
Books are symbolic mainly because they have been banned by the Germans, yet they are there, in Auschwitz, as if to telegraph the idea that books on their own are an act of resistance. The fact that these books made it into Auschwitz is a testament to the living power that books cast on the adults and the children at the family camp. To Dita, they are the object of her love; she takes care of them with tenderness, and delights in keeping them safe and sound for the others who use them.
Books also represent the truth, and the more transgressive they are, the bigger the truth, as shown with Dita’s favorite book, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk. Books can also be inside a person, so even if they are taken away, they still exist, as evidenced when the teachers become “living books.” Most importantly, the author demonstrates through the motif of the library and the books that exist inside and out of it, that they are givers of life and information. For Dita, while imprisoned at Auschwitz, books are her entire reason for striving to live.
The Value of Music in Dark Times
Music is an important motif throughout the narrative. When Mengele whistles the music of Wagner, he embraces Hitler’s favorite composer and promotes a musician who had strong racist opinions about Jews; it is a crushing reality that even monsters can appropriate beautiful things and make them their own.
When the September transport heads for the gas chambers, the doomed prisoners sing. The songs are symbolic of Jewish culture and identity. On Passover, when the children sing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the entirety of Block 31 rejoices, but the same time, the song has an odious history. Hitler played it on birthdays and in propaganda films. The musicians at Auschwitz and other camps were forced to play the song for the enjoyment of the Nazis so that its last exulted lines about heaven and brotherhood become a mocking parody of the Nazi agenda. When Mengele takes the song over, the adults stop singing, because once again, the music has been adopted for sheer enjoyment, by their killers.
Ashes
When the ashes from the murdered Jews of the September transport fall to the ground, the symbolic nature of it depends on whose perspective readers see it through. Miriam Edelman explains to the children that the ashes are the people returning to them. This symbolic way of looking at the ashes speaks to the notion of immortality. Even though they are dead, for Miriam, their lives go on.
Dita has another view of the ashes. She sees them as a prison. That their ashes fall in Auschwitz means they will remain in Auschwitz forever. The Jewish customs of burial are prescribed in the Torah and so, symbolically, the ashes floating down from the dead who were killed by Nazis is counter to God’s desire for his people. For Dita, the ashes are a perpetual death sentence where the dead will continue to suffer.
