Redhead of Auschwitz review

Disclosure: I am a straight male and around 20ish of age. So I had never really gotten into the perspective and eyes of the girl, teenage girl, sister, woman, mother, and grandmother before, all in one book. Especially before I started reading again female authors. So I think all of this book became more compelling and vivid to me and truly new to me just because of my lack of awareness in a woman's eyes. (I was advised to read more books written by women or have well-written women lead characters in them to improve my writing and perspective on the world. So this is why I am here.)

Forgive me for my both imperfect writing and opinion about the book but I hope you get inspired to read the book for my review. Even just reading the short review is enough.

Short review (non-spoiler) 
-   What did you like or dislike?
    - The only thing to dislike is the horrific events that happened in this book in the first place. I wish they never happened because no one deserves to be treated this way. But sadly, they did happen. We can't change the past anymore. But we can still change the future through what we do now in the present. (This book will help you view the world in a better light so that we could all have a better future.)
    - What I like about the book is the bravery of Rosie to relive her painful past again just to tell her story to us and the love of her granddaughter to write this book alongside the rest of her relatives and friends who are supporting her so that they can put the story on paper. This story should be read and shared so that we could all truly see that we are just like the other person. Our separateness is an illusion. Breaking that illusion is each of our duties so that we could prevent or at least lessen the cruelty occurring in the world and hopefully prevent the holocaust from happening again. I like the lessons it gives to us and Rosie letting us live her whole life from the first page to the last. I have never been more grateful for my lot and have seen the beauty of life even more after reading this book. This book won't change our past but can positively influence our future. 
-  To whom would you recommend this book? 
    - To anyone but hopefully above 18 yrs old or at least able to stomach all the horrific scenes it.
    - You can pause from those scenes but please come back and finish it. All the painful things you will experience secondhand in reading the book will be worthwhile in the end because of the lessons Rosie wants to share with you. Those lessons cannot be fully digested if you just skip to the last chapter, you must endure her struggles as well so that you can experience the full weight of the lessons
    - The extremely and unbelievably horrifying scenes you will read in this book (that truly happened by the way) can never overshadow the good things you can get and learn from this book.
    - So please read it. Pause in the horrifying scenes if you want but still push forward like how Rosie pushes forward just to live, just to go home.
    - You don't need to be Jewish or Catholic or from another kind of religion or even religious to some degree to understand this true story. You don't even need to understand Psalms quotes at the beg of each chap. I don't even understand them but they are deep and poetically beautiful. (I did hear once that psalms were initially songs or meant to be sung so no wonder they are poetic.) The Psalms set up the mood or foreshadow what will happen in the chapter you are currently reading.
    - Even though parts of the book showcase Jewish life, the book has notes for the Jewish words and phrases Rosie and her family use to make you understand and appreciate the beauty of their religion and culture. And I say that when I consider myself pagan (Well my life perspective says: If God does exist, we should do our best to do good. That is what God would have wanted. But he left us volition. Whether you do good, is your own choice. Your responsibility. If God doesn't exist, and we only have our own will and our minds to guide us in life, then it is still in the best interest of all humanity and for the benefit of us all for us to do our best to do good and prevent or lessen the cruelties happening in this world. I may sound indifferent to God but I do care and appreciate life whether it was created by God or by pure chance. I appreciate life even more so after reading this book.)
- Why did you choose this rating?
    - My short and long review of this book says it all. I could have given it 6 stars if possible so that more people could read this. 







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Long review (Spoilers and a bit more emotional. I know but you just can't stop feeling anything when you read the book):

I wrote this in between chapters because I had to write. After all, the scenes in the chapters just put a sense of shock and disbelief. Rosie and Leah are the strongest human beings I could have ever known

Here are paragraphs in reaction to some of the chapters of the book.

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I feel so damn sorry and ungrateful for my lot.

The Jews and the suffering they experienced are terrible. Beyond terrible. The intense degree of cruelty they experience cannot be fully described. 

Damn, I was a fool, although a vastly ignorant child, to think war is cool when I play that modern warfare... Black ops games. I see the warriors fight for their country without fear of death but never even thought of the victims who never signed up for this.

I realize now the subtle but essential purpose of memoirs so that the present generation should learn from the mistakes of the previous generation. No generation could ever be perfect that is why we must be constantly improving and learning so that humanity could progress and so that we could leave a world for the next generation that is better than the one we were born into.

Memories and biographies are important. Ryan Holiday is right. No wonder he devours memories and biographies so easily.


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I read twice Viktor Frankl's book “Man search for meaning and I have that relative awareness of how the camp of men's environment is and what happens there. I am also aware there is a separate camp for women who have different kinds of labor but I never knew exactly what happens inside the women's camp until now.

It is as horrifying as the means camp if not more but the women are oddly kinder in there. I think women are truly just kinder to their fellow than a man could ever be or maybe apparently these Jewish girls in this camp were just really most kind.

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I have a confession to make; I, at times, increase my average reading time per day and even maximize my enjoyment of reading, I read during my lunch or dinner or even get a snack while reading outside in the afternoons.

But as I read this book, I stopped eating while reading. Not out of disgust because of the gruesome scenes in the book (Although I won't judge that lessens your appetite to eat while reading the book ) but rather out of damn guilt. As Rosie describes how hungry she was, and how dehydrated she was almost perpetually throughout the brickyard and concentration camp. I just can't anymore. But this was not a downside for me rather it became an aid for a deeper realization of my current reality.

I realize further how lucky I am to live in the modern world that even when we are not rich, we still have at least 3 square meals a day. I realize further that it is because of their great suffering and their endurance to suffer it, and their commitment to the holocaust to now happen again, made sure that in the modern world now that I am lucky to live in, the holocaust won't happen again or that world's starvation and discrimination is being prevented by a lot of people already.

There is an abundance of food and a deprivation of it in the book. It alternates between most chapters. The abundance of food is Rosie's childhood and early teen years and of course, the extreme lack of it is to her unfortunate journey into the Holocaust her showcasing the great delicious Jewish foods she eats makes her hungry at the ausbwiths more visceral for readers. I am not sure if the way that this book is written is a decision by her granddaughter and the editors or if it is how Rosie remembered her experiences when she speaks about the Holocaust. Either way, it is fine by me but I do feel more likely the latter is the truer one. I can only imagine this is entirely how Rosie tells her story to her granddaughter. I realize well, the moment when I almost got nothing to eat during the day, all I can think about is food. Much more if you are deprived of it virtually every day until the lack of calories daily makes your skins touch your bones, to paraphrase Rosie on how she described herself and her fellow camp sisters.


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When I got to the part where all the girls (including Rosie and Leah) who got access to great books (thru the Kellers family) and created a book club, that is when I realize
the little Jewish women (the children, the teens,) are one of the smartest, most beautiful (both inner and outer beauty) and kindness girls who have ever lived during the horrific times of WWII. These real historical characters are more real than any character I read both in fiction and nonfiction. Their dialogues are beautiful.

Even though by the time they got to the concentration camp, they are already malnourished, and lost all their beautiful hair they are still beautiful and angels in my eyes. It just pains me deeply me such lovely girls should have to go through all of that. No one should. But especially these girls who truly don't deserve any of the cruel things done to them.

It pains me even further to realize that the holocaust or genocide has to happen for us to just realize regardless of the country you are born in or the religion or upbringing you grew up in, we are all still truly the same. We all just want happiness, contentment, and fulfillment in our extremely short lives (when compared to the eternity of the universe)


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Rosa is the queen of escaping and hiding without getting caught up until well after a few chapters when she can't escape into sleep or other 



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When I get to this scene. I realize she is one of the bravest fearest human beings. how could she endure all of that


“She shakes her head. “Look at this knife. Look at what I have. Just this knife. They call me a doctor, but it is a joke. I am nothing without my equipment. No medication, no alcohol, not even a simple numbing cream. How can I do this with just a knife?” I look straight into her eyes. “Kind doctor, please, I want to go home, please, take them out.” She nods slowly. “There is no other way.” “This is what we have to do, so we will do it,” I say. I am not scared. I just want the tumors gone. “Come sit down on this chair and hold on to the sides of it.” I do what she says. I close my eyes. She opens my uniform and holds one hand on my skin. Her hand is cold, but it is firm and still, and it steadies the beating of my heart. “I am so sorry,” she says as she takes her knife and slices it across my skin. At first, I feel nothing at all as I watch my skin get slit open and blood run wild as if it is a prisoner being set free after years of confinement. Then I gasp as I feel the searing pain and I cannot breathe. She sticks her fingers through the wound and opens my flesh wider. Then she takes the knife again and twists it inside me. The pain intensifies to a level I have never felt before in my life. All the vessels  Thatin my chest are being twisted. I put my arm in my mouth to muffle my screams. She pulls out a tumor the size of a grape and puts it on the table. She takes a cloth and presses it to the wound and my blood pounds at the wound site, angry that it is being blocked from coming out. Finally, slowly, the pain begins to subside.”

— The Redhead of Auschwitz: A True Story (Holocaust Survivor True Stories WWII) by Nechama Birnbaum
https://a.co/70au7iV

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In the last chapters, where they finally got liberated by the Russians. I am also in disbelief as they are and the imagery in those chapters is breathtaking. Especially when Rosie suddenly saw flowers when she came out of the bunker but said they weren't there before when she entered the bunker (They were locked underground, in the darkness, for so long as if they were buried alive already.) 

Throughout that chapter and the rest, I begin to see the Jewish girls, especially Leah and Rosie who were thin and small seeds that came out of the underground just like beautiful flowers she saw. I can't help but rejoice and find more beauty and resilience in these girls than I have ever seen in my whole life. (After being freed, Rosie was given a suitcase of beautiful suitcases, that she shared with her fellow girls who came with her in the death march. She was given these clothes by the old aged Jewish people she took care of at the unexpected nursing home in the concentration camp. Seeing Rosie, Leah and the rest of the Jewish girls in my mind's eye, wearing their lovely dresses truly makes me see them more as small thin seeds that have grown into lovely flowers despite the harshess conditions that they are forced to survive in. Those last parts are both pure reality and purely poetic. I think the word for it surreal. But all of that truly happened


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To the authoer and Rosie, I see more clearly now what you are trying to convey to us.

You trying to help us see through our illusion of separateness. You trying to help us realize the reason why we judge and become cruel to each other because, to some degree in ourselves, we see the other person as some degree "separate" different from you. Sometimes that small seed (Which is an illusion) can fester into a perspective that others are monsters, demons, or something to look down upon. I see this is why Holocaust was made possible and continued for such a long time because every person who operates it (Not only Hitler is to blame) might have, at some degree, seen the other person as vastly different from himself. But not all the Nazi soldiers are like this, some are even guilty or doubting their beliefs, especially when they get to see the death and pain they are causing. Now, this makes the reverse wisdom through. The more you see something in common with another person, the kinder you tend to become. The more you learn from them. Now I see why a soldier gave a piece of bread from his food rations to Viktor Frankl, and why that old Nazi soldier who aided Rosie so that she won't be hanged by one of the more vicious Nazi soldiers in the ammunition factory she is ---forced to work in.

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-Fin-