Heather Morris / Historical novel

Three Sisters

Survive for your sisters with power and hope

This book is about three Jewish sisters, who survived Auschwitz together. They did this after a promise to their father, who told them that they are stronger together. The sisters give each other the power and hope needed to go on, despite all the desperation and sadness. This book also shows that you can still make your future, no matter how bleak the present may be.

What makes this book so good? 

Heather Morris has a really beautiful way of explaining emotions. You can perfectly imagine how afraid the girls had to have been on their way to Auschwitz and how brave Cibi (the eldest sister) was. Because of history books and musea, we already have an idea of how afraid people were, but this book shows a whole range of emotions. Livi (The youngest sister) even has moments where she expresses irritation about the things she got, while I would think that you wouldn’t do that if you were just afraid. There are even some small moments of happiness.

This book makes perfectly clear how massive the destruction was in that camp. The large number of people that arrived at the camp to just get randomly killed in the most diverse ways possible. You immediately know that life hangs by a thread in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The sisters had many moments where it could have turned out differently and they wouldn’t have survived. That is also why it felt so good to read how their lives went on after the Holocaust. They blossomed in a new homeland.

What could have been better?

It is actually hard to find something to improve on. It is based on a true story, so you couldn’t change too much on the personality of the characters or you couldn’t change the endings of the characters. That would all have driven the book away from the true story. 

The barracks seemed to be slightly less awful than I would imagine from museums and history books. There it always feels like some planks barely holding on together with the worst beds and hardly a place for sanitary stuff, but here it is the one thing that isn’t that detailed. 

All things considered, this book is a really beautiful story that shows how the strong bond between sisters can get you through anything. No matter how great the powerlessness may be.

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I wrote this review for Libelle magazine and that’s also why the structure of this review is a bit different. If you want to see what they made of it you can view it over here: Libelle Leesclub: ons recensieteam las ‘De drie zussen van Auschwitz’ van Heather Morris – Libelle