Tag Archive | Ellie Midwood

The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood

Dec21

Symbols Of Resistance

The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz by Ellie Midwood is a powerful historical novel. It is a tale of courage, resistance and hope. Even in the darkest pit it is possible for light to shine.

The reader witnesses the bravery in a time of complete and utter horror. Ellie Midwood focuses in on two characters who do what they can in order to tell the world their stories. “You … will need to survive to avenge those people who perished.” Many went straight to their deaths, those who didn’t must tell the world of the evil.

Hope kept people going. Without hope the people perish. “He was the only person who gave her hope in this hell. Without him life lost all meaning.” In the depths of hell, people needed hope to believe that there were better times ahead.

There were many ways to resist. “Survival was the biggest form of resistance.” To keep going and to hold heads high when the Nazis wanted to brow beat everyone, offered hope to all who witnessed.

Auschwitz had guard towers. “Guard towers … to ensure that we won’t escape to tell our stories.” 

As the war drew to a close, the Nazis tried to destroy all the evidence in the camps. “They’ll slaughter us all … No one wants us to walk out of here and start telling our stories.” – But people did survive and told the stories of those who perished.

Continue reading →

When The World Went Silent by Ellie Midwood

Dec6

Pandora’s Box

When The World Went Silent by Ellie Midwood is a powerful, harrowing historical novel that consumed me from the start.

The novel is set in Germany during World War II but opens and closes in Hiroshima in 1946. The whole novel surrounds the topic of the nuclear bomb, as we join and follow a young girl with a passion for physics. Deaf since measles aged five, Mina has immersed herself in science. “The world outside is hostile, filled with prejudice and intolerance. But precise sciences are her sanctuary.”

Following the Nazis rise to power, Mina was excluded from school and seen as ‘undesirable’, and has been home-schooled. Her superior talent within nuclear physics has brought her to the attention of the Nazis at the highest level. Mina is sent to Berlin to work on the development of the nuclear bomb but she is determined to never make a bomb. She wants to heal not harm. “We’ll all have to face the choices we made today.”

Mina has a conscience, a heart and much courage. “The courage of those who dare to stand against the darkness.” As a young girl, she stood up for the marginalized except for one time when she ran, and this haunts her dreams. “Still has nightmares… she was just a young girl whose only fault was walking away when she should have stayed.” The guilt remains even though she knows there is nothing she could have done. Later she is told “Sometimes running away is the only logical thing to do.”

Continue reading →

I Have To Save Them by Ellie Midwood

Feb2

The Angel Of Auschwitz

I Have To Save Them by Ellie Midwood is the most powerful, heartbreaking and horrifying dual timeline novel that I just could not put down.

The story starts and ends with the same day in 1961. It bookends the tale. There is a choice to be made – what would you choose?

Much of the novel is set in Auschwitz and is grounded in fact as we follow German citizen, Orli, who was betrayed by her Nazi husband six years earlier. We also ‘hear’ events from 1961 as we see “She may have left Auschwitz’s walls, but the walls of Auschwitz have never left her … tormenting her with nightmares of the past.” As a medic who was under Josef Mengele in Auschwitz, Orli saw terrible things, things that would haunt her forever. It took real strength of character not to crumble as she clung “to her humanity in the face of such brutality.”

Within the infirmary in Auschwitz there grew up a friendship between the nurses. They had to be strong in order to support each other. They offered kindnesses where they could. It felt like a drop in the ocean but “whoever saves a single life saves an entire universe.” The women stood together through it all. “Together we’ll pull through.”

There were times when they felt evil was too much to bear but “they were warriors, each one of them a beacon of resilience, a beacon of hope.” They had to hold on to the hope that one day the sun would shine again. “She knew that even in the darkest times, there was always a glimmer of light, a way to hold onto humanity.” The light shines in the darkness as the angel of Auschwitz walked among them.

Continue reading →

The Child Who Lived by Ellie Midwood

Aug16

An Indomitable Spirit

The Child Who Lived by Ellie Midwood is a powerful historical novel that I just could not put down, and devoured it in just one sitting.

The book is the true story of a young women with an indomitable spirit, who against all the odds, fell in love and had a baby in Mauthausen. This is a baby and mother who both should not have lived. This is the mother’s story.

All the action is set during World War II in various concentration camps. All of them, absolutely horrendous – but despite this, a character has maintained a kind heart. “A rebel with a moral compass always pointing in the right direction in spite of the circumstances.”

To give in to circumstances would be to perish. One had to hold on to hope and believe that one day the end would come. “We ought to stick it out to the end just to annoy them with being alive.”

Continue reading →