THE REST IS MEMORY by Lily Tuck - Review

 

Lily Tuck has written a historical fiction book based on fact. THE REST IS MEMORY (WWNorton&Co) is the story of 13-year old, Polish-Catholic girl, Czeslawa Kwoka, scene here on the cover. She is one of over 40-thousand photographs of Auschwitz camp victims taken by Wilhelm Brasse, a Jew himself. 

Once the victims arrived at the camps, they were shoved off cattle trains, their clothes ripped off by the guards who chose the ones who appeared strong enough to perform forced labor. The others were sent to the "showers" which were the gas chambers where they were killed. Those picked to live (for now) were hosed down, hair shaved. given prison rags to wear and had their prisoner identification numbers tattooed on their arms before being photographed by Wilhelm Brasse. The photos were nothing more than mug/head shots. Young children who looked Aryan enough were ripped from their parents arms and sent to Germany to be "Germanized." It would be many years before these photographs were discovered. 

Czeslawa, her mother, Katarzyna and friend, Krystna were sent to block six and eventually killed.

THE REST IS MEMORY lists many names of  holocaust victims, including their tattoo number. It is a difficult book to read. For me, because it took me into the camp through the eyes of an innocent thirteen-year-old girl and many more people who would be murdered.

 

Lily Tuck was born in Paris and is the author of four previous novels – Interviewing Matisse, The Woman Who Walked on Water, the PEN/Faulkner award finalist Siam and The News From Paraguay, which won the National Book Award – as well as a collection of stories, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived.

Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review.

She lives in New York City.