CILKA'S JOURNEY: A NOVEL by Heather Morris
✯✯✯✯ Review by Astrid Galactic
Way up in the Arctic Circle there is a Siberian gulag that goes by the name of Vorkuta Gulag. This was the home of Cilka Klein for 10 long miserable years of her life. Not by choice but as a prisoner of the Soviet Russians at the end of World War ll. We know Cilka from the novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, which chronicled the love story of Lale Sokolov and his wife Gita. All three were prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Nazi's reign of terror. In this sequel, Cilka's Journey, we follow Cilka as she is unfairly punished yet again for crimes that were nothing but trumped up charges that sent her off to a grueling and inhumane work camp, better known as a concentration camp.
As with TToA, Cilka was a real person but the book is loosely based on her life with many liberties taken to create a fictionalized account. A few stories from the lives of others were woven into the story as well as inspirations from the imagination of the author. From what I could tell, Cilka's Journey contains much more fiction than the previous book, in part, because Morris was able to actually meet and compare notes with the real Lale Sokolov whereas the same opportunities were not available for Cilka's story. With that said, Morris did extensive research as to what life was like at Vorkuta for those who spent time there, from the prisoners to the trusties and also some of the employees. Many of the various physical living conditions were laced into the story detailing what everyday life was like as well as how the social groupings created a network of caste systems, often utilizing fear for their own survival tactics.
Cilka, a Slovakian Jew, arrives at Vorkuta straight out of Auschwitz-Birkenau and is housed with 19 other women she must share a cold, flimsy hut with. The others are there for a variety or perceived crimes against the Russian government but Cilka is the only one with previous concentration camp experience. She fears the others will hold this against her, especially regarding what she had to do in order not to be killed, so she tries her best to keep that information to herself. As the ladies do their best to survive from day to day, we get to know a few of the characters whom Cilka develops bonds with. Then there are the "husbands" who often come and visit them. In other words, men who have the run of the place and rape them. This creates its own strange psychological environment amongst the group.
During the day, all of the prisoners must work outside in harsh conditions with little protection. One of the jobs the women are forced to do is to transfer heavy buckets of coal from place to place. Early on, after Josie, a woman Cilka has befriended, has an accident, Cilka manages to obtain a job working in the gulag's hospital. Not only is this job less labor intensive but it provides Cilka with more warmth and food. She takes to this job rather well and it leads to a new passion for Cilka as well as sets the tone for one of the central paths in the story. It also presents different dynamics for Cilka in regards to her relationship with the other ladies in the hut. She knows this and is very cautious for fear of retaliation because she is aware of the jealousy that some of the others might hold against her. Cilka is proactive and makes sure she uses it to their advantage just as much as her own by smuggling food and other items to help make life a little easier for her hut mates.
Ten years slowly go by and Cilka gradually works her way around the grounds learning who she can trust and who she needs to avoid and what she must do just to get by. She also learns much more about nursing and broadens her range within the hospital. Throughout Cilka's Journey, we feel her anguish, her fears, her struggles and even her joys as we get to know what life was like in that faraway land where life is taken one difficult day at a time.
This is a book that I very much liked but have one little issue with. I've always had a problem with books and movies that tend to make the protagonist the constant hero, saint, savior, most loved, and the best at everything. It always comes off like a high school story in Fantasyland. While I knew going into the book that it is Historical Fiction, I wanted to believe everything along the way, yet I couldn't help but not buy into some of what was being presented because of the extreme idealization of the character. This is the one area where I feel that the story manages to make Cilka's story less real and I did not want to think that any of the real parts were not true to life. Because it was based on a real woman's journey into Hell and back, I wanted to know exactly which parts were true and what was enhanced for the sake of a coherent story. In some ways, this was somewhat of a fairy tale; albeit, one that included lots of pain and suffering along the way. Never the less, it was well worth reading.
As a sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, there are several references in the book that provide a much richer story for those who have read the previous book. One can still read Cilka's Journey and appreciate it for what it has to offer but I would very much suggest that one do what I did by getting a copy of the first book before you take your journey with Cilka. Not only will you read about how Nazi concentration camps compare to the Russian gulags but you will have a much better understanding of where Cilka came from and what her mindset was like once she arrives at her second stop along the way of her horrendous journey through her young, tortured life from one Hellhole to another.
*This is the sequel to the book THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ by Heather Morris.
Historical Fiction*
Hardcover, 352 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1250265708
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Expected Release Date: October 1st, 2019
*Loosely based on a real life person
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