Cilka's Journey

Cilka Klein is a strong woman who lived through insurmountable horrors. This book offers all emotions anger sadness happiness and fear, you'll definitely fall in love with Cilka and her story!

This novel is based on a skeleton of factual details regarding the life of Cilka Klein. The story itself is fictional, intended to represent the types of experiences that the real Cilka probably faced. Having said that, this novel gives readers a peak into the experiences that millions faced in the Soviet gulags. Most of this story is set in a frigid gulag with flashbacks to Cilka's survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The story is a compelling one, an interesting one, and even an educational one. For those like I who have not read "The Gulag Archipelago," this book will give you an understanding of human survival under such inhuman conditions, both natural and human-imposed. On that basis alone, this book is worth the read. As a bonus, this book is the first one I have read in over a year that did not contain a single grammatical or spelling error. Kudos to the editors and their attention to detail, an art that seems to have been lost in modern times.

Enjoyed this book, made my cry with the part with her mom 😭 really good book

Such a wonderful read about the Holocaust. This book is the second in a series of books. Such a wonderful author!

Love this story! The author keeps you interested in the way she tells this. I enjoyed it so much I bought her next book "Three Sister"

Cilka is a character Lale and Gita knew in Auschwitz (from their story –The Tattooist of Auschwitz). This is a fictional account taken from many true histories of women prisoners in the Russian gulag system after Cilka is freed from Auschwitz at the end of WWII only to end up as a “political” prisoner in a Northern Siberian work camp for “sleeping with the enemy.” It doesn’t matter that she was only 16 when imprisoned in Auschwitz and then forced to be with the SS commandant there because of her physical beauty. She did what she had to to survive, but her past follows her even to her new work camp, which is a new kind of hell for her. This book was horrifyingly fascinating in that these types of stories actually happened. About 18 million people were sentence to these work camps in Russia during Stalin’s evil reign, and 6 million died. Many of the people running the camps were just as bad as the Nazi Gestapo. The atrocities of rape and injuries from unsafe mine conditions and the frozen Arctic weather with not enough clothing to stay warm, not enough food to stay nourished, all led to severe suffering for the prisoners there.

This story is a horrible one. I cannot even imagine the life these people were forced to live. Heather Morris does an excellent job of portraying the Jewess, Cilka, the closed-off woman, who protects her soul and her sanity at all costs, as she is charged and convicted of being a Nazi collaborator because she was raped over and over again by one Nazi officer in particular, and many others too, and then sent to a Soviet gulag as far north of the globe as one can go. Her ability to close herself off is sad, yet she couldn't survive without her resolve to let nothing in. Cilka's story is a sad one, there is a glimmer of hope at the end, but this is a story of survival, with no real "happy ending". Definitely worth the read.

Wow…. My heart breaks at each new thing that was said. The frustration I felt for her, but the hope I had for her as the book went along. Such an amazing book, but so very sad at the same time.

After finishing the first book I was quite stok to read this one. With compelling story, capture every moment brilliantly wheather sad or happy. It's truly a tale that everyone should need to know about. I personally like this one better than the original. Though it sometime heart-wrenching read but also one of the most inspiring book I ever read. 4.9/5

Good book

Great book. Please follow my advise and read it in this order 1. The Tattooist of Auschwitz 2. Cilka's Journey 3. Three sisters

Bellissimo libro, appassionante e ben scritto, su una realtà, quella dei gulag russi, poco narrata

I had originally read The Tatooist from Auschwitz’s…based on realityof a survivor…it remains so impossible to me that people could be so cruel …and amazing that anyone survived the abuse …I followed this story further,reading Three Sisters ,then Cilkas Journey ,,such necessary historical events necessary to remind us to never let this happen again !?some repetition in the last two books but overall the authors writing definitely pulled me in.i think it should be read as a series by Helen Morris ! Bevmacdougall ps our book club has read the first two books !