BLOK 42

In Obara’s novel, a young Polish woman shows indomitable courage in the face of the occupation of her country during World War II.

In 1939, Aniela Bartosz (née Majewska) has a wonderful life in Kraków. She’s married to a good man, Henryk Bartosz, and they have a beautiful daughter, Wanda. But when the Nazis march into Poland, the Bartoszes’ dream turns into a nightmare. Aniela’s father, Professor Bogdan Majewski, is arrested with the whole faculty of his university and dies in a labor camp; Henryk goes off to join the defense forces and then the resistance against the Nazis. Strong-willed Aniela is seen as a troublemaker by the Nazis and winds up in Auschwitz—but before that happens, little Wanda is taken from her mother and given to a German family to raise as their own. Aniela later becomes the secretary of a camp functionary named Joachim Beckmann, who rapes her and then convinces himself that he’s in love with her; she suffers through this because he promises that he’ll try to find out what happened to Wanda. Later, however, she’s sent to Blok 42, the camp brothel for Polish prisoners. Blok 42 was a real place at Auschwitz, and the author’s discovery of this fact inspired the novel. Obara is Polish American and the daughter of immigrants, so she knows the culture of the Bartoszes well, and her prose is skillful throughout, as when she describes a bombing as “obliterating…men in an arc of chaotic energy.” And she captures the arrogance and cruelty of the Nazis, as well their blind hypocrisy, as when Beckmann warns Aniela that Russians have no ethics. Aniela is a strong and memorable character who achieves “a fundamental belief in…what that life was worth.” The book’s last lines are truly stunning.

A vivid and insightful historical novel by a debut author.