Review - Beyond the Wire - 5 stars

 

Beyond the Wire by James Shipman, is a World War II novel designed to bring home the horrors of what humans can do to each other. It is set inside Auschwitz concentration camp in late 1944 and is based on a true story. The key character is Jakub Bak and several other prisoners and a few of the Nazi guards and camp administrators.

Bak’s murdered father had given advice that Jakub promised to follow –basically “live at any cost.” There were times when Jakub wondered if he should do some of the things he was being ordered to do. He and other young, able-bodied people were pulled out to essentially be slaves in the camp.  He and others were assigned to a group  known as Sonderkommando who were to go through the clothes and possessions of those arriving who were going to gas chamber and then to move the bodies to the crematorium.

It was hellacious work and were it not for a fleeting few minutes, he was able to spend with another Jewish woman, Anna, he might not have done it. Anna was marched many kilometers to a munitions plant to work helping make ammunition for the Nazis.  She and others squirreled some of the powder away for a time in the not-too-distant future when the resistance could have an uprising. Even Jakub did not know this.

The inhumanity in Auschwitz-Birkenau is brought into the light in numerous ways along with the human failings.  All this action is set against a backdrop of the Russians approaching and the liberation of the camp at hand. Escape was a dream but one that was an aspiration. For those of us for whom this war and these camps are only from history books and maybe older parents and other family members, this is a heart-wrenching story but well worth the read.