House of Dolls

Rating:
Summary: An essential & compelling piece Holocaust literature
Review: An essential & compelling piece Holocaust literature, but not much value for JD/NO fanatics.

This book is hard to find, and is also a hard read. If you have come this far then your search is just beginning. Most booksellers list it as delated or out-of-print. I found a copy at my local library, of all places. But if you persevere, then you will be rewarded with a book that tells you everything you every wanted to know (and probably didn't) about life in a German concentration camp. It recounts the true story of a fourteen year-old Polish Jew schoolgirl who eventually arrived at the infamous "Joy Divsion", which was part of a camp that housed prositutes for the pleasure of German officers.

It ranks alongside "A Clockwork Orange" as one of the two most graphic and haunting books I've ever read. I think some of the imagery will remain with me a long time. There are also many allusions to Orwell's world of "1984", and there are recurrent (and sadly true) references to the Germans' twisted terminology. Even the concept of a barrack of prositutes being a "Joy Division" seems a perfect example of Orwell's "doublespeak".

I had hoped to ascertain a bit more knowledge about Joy Division's influences, but apart from the title, there is little relevance. So by that criteria, there was not much gained by reading the book, but the book became compelling in its own right, and I am glad to have read it, and might read more of his work and the genre. But note, that if your crazy about the band, and don't have the broader interest or think you could stomach this sort of thing, then there might not be much point in reading it in the first place.

Ka-Tzetnik's books are novels, in that they draw on the author's experiences and those of other inmates, but do not necessarily depict actual events and actual people. However, regardless of the context, House of Dolls is not for the faint-hearted; it makes Anne Frank's confinement seem like a Sunday School picnic.

The first link (listed below) is the best if you want info on Ka-Tzetnik & the House of Dolls. It's written as apart of an academic essay, but still quite informative and readable. My major query concerned how the author fitted into the picture, so to speak. The essay explains that it is his sister whom is the central character in the book, which is based on her diary. His character in the book is known as "Harry". The book also mentions his younger brother, Moni. Ka-Tzetnik has also written, seperately, about Moni's miserable and tortured life at Auschwitz. Ka-Tzetnik covers his own story in his book "Atrocity", apparently.

Rating:
Summary: I Wanted More Information
Review: I was rather disappointed with this book. The author is describing her time during he holocaust and in the camps. She was made to become a prostitute. I know that stating that I was disappointed in the book is probably not politically correct, but it is honest. Sure the book is full of heart breaking stories of what she and millions more went through. There are some details of here personal experiences. I just felt that the author was scratching the surface, I wanted a richer, more detailed account of her time there. Overall I thought it was an average book, but about 100 pages too short.

Rating:
Summary: I Wanted More Information
Review: I was rather disappointed with this book. The author is describing her time during he holocaust and in the camps. She was made to become a prostitute. I know that stating that I was disappointed in the book is probably not politically correct, but it is honest. Sure the book is full of heart breaking stories of what she and millions more went through. There are some details of here personal experiences. I just felt that the author was scratching the surface, I wanted a richer, more detailed account of her time there. Overall I thought it was an average book, but about 100 pages too short.

Rating:
Summary: Slow start, but half-decent.
Review: Ka-Tzetnik 135633, House of Dolls (Simon and Schuster, 1955)

Ka-Tzetnik 135633, Nazi-assigned pen name of an Auschwitz survivor (oddly, there seems to be some controversy as to who Ka-Tzetnik 135633 was; some say it was Yehiel De-Nir, others Karol Cetynski), here gives an account of life in a Nazi prison camp, but in the most roundabout of ways. This seemingly autobiographical novel (viz. Shvitti: A Vision, where he speaks of his own sister in Daniella's role) deals mostly with the stories of Harry and Daniella, a brother and sister living in the Jewish quarters of an unnamed town on the border of Germany and Poland. Roughly the first half of the book is a simple depiction of trying to get along day to day in the Jewish quarters, told mostly from Daniella's viewpoint. To be blunt, it's slow as molasses. The book picks up (and becomes the highly-recommended-by-the-underground book it is) when Daniella, not long after Harry, is taken to a concentration camp and ends up working in the House of Dolls, a camp brothel. Harry, in the next camp over, has been made the camp medic for no reason anyone can discern. There is little plot to the latter half of the novel; instead, Ka-Tzetnik 135633 infuses the whole mess with a painful sense of irony. Imagine an O.Henry story that runs 250 pages and has a far, far darker cast to it than anything O.Henry ever wrote.

There is much to be gained from reading this book beyond the prurient; don't get me wrong. However, I'm guessing that its audience is going to be an exceptionally narrow one; those who both revel in (or are horrified by, but cannot turn their eyes from) degradation (Daniella, I should mention, is fourteen when the novel takes place; this is the dark and ugly flip side of Duras' wonderful novel The Lover) and are willing to put up with the diction that one had thought went extinct with the death of Henry James. Still, it is the literary equivalent of, say, Shoah, the excellent and painful nine and a half hour film that still stands as the be-all and end-all of concentration camp documentaries. It is brutal and unflinching, for all its slowness, and deserves a wider audience than that which it has already captured. ** ½