Mischling

 

Mischling by Affinity Konar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If a Danse Macabre could be written in words, this would be it. Telling the story of twin children and other genetic anomalies (dwarfism, albinism) that were sorted from concentration camps and used as experiments, this is far from an easy book to read. However, Konar uses such beautiful language and arresting images to portray these horrifics that at times you almost forget what she is describing. The tortures described are sometimes fantastic, and you can't help but wonder if they are based on fact--and then you realize that of course they are. The reunions and miracles that occur seem almost as fantastic, and easier to discount. But rather than discredit them, I chose to believe that if such atrocities could be real, so could these moments of hope. This story ends not with the liberation of Auschwitz, but goes on to describe the many months these refugees endured trying to find loved ones, and make their way to somewhere safe--a part that many stories leave out. Books of the holocaust are not easy to read, but I think we can learn from the strength of the sufferers and gain a determination to stop such cruelty wherever we find it.

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My letters were growing angry and their lack of signature was erasing me.  No one was counting bits of me in the laboratory anymore.  No one was totting up pieces of me.  I did not know if this was because the doctor told people not to or because the best part of me was gone.

Because I had it still, that wild hope; it was as steady as a spines and so pronounced I marveled. that the nurses and technicians did not take note of this development within me and mark it on their charts.

isn't evil a form of stupidity?

Those stars, they knew what suffering and renewal meant, they were forged from collapse and dust and fire.

the burden saved you, he finally said, until you had a moment to examine it, to feel, for once, its full weight.