Cilka's Journey Her beauty saved her life - and condemned her. In 1942 Cilka
Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau
Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long
beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka
learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival. After
liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to a
desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic
Circle. Innocent and imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and
horribly familiar, each day a battle for survival. Cilka befriends a woman
doctor, and learns to nurse the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them
under unimaginable conditions. And when she tends to a man called Alexandr,
Cilka finds that despite everything, there is room in her heart for love. Based
on what is known of Cilka Klein's time in Auschwitz, and on the experience of
women in Siberian prison camps, Cilka's Journey is the breathtaking sequel to
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. A powerful testament to the triumph of the human
will, this novel will make you weep, but it will also leave you astonished and
uplifted by one woman's fierce determination to survive, against all odds. 'She
was the bravest person I ever met' Lale Sokolov, The Tattooist of Auschwitz