I first learned about Dita Kraus when I read a review on LibraryThing of The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe. It is a fictionalized account of her life during the Holocaust. The review led to an interesting conversation about ″based on the true story″ literature, the sensationalizing of the Holocaust, and the merits of fictional Holocaust literature. I decided to skip the novel and chose to read her memoir instead.

A Delayed Life is not only, or even primarily, a Holocaust story. The first quarter details her childhood in Prague, from her earliest memories through her thirteenth birthday. The second quarter covers the war years, 1942-45. The last half describes life in Prague after the war, her immigration to Israel, life on a kibbutz, her marriage, and teaching career. Taken in it′s entirety, it is a rich history of both a life and a time period.

Dita Polach was born in 1929, the only child of a middle class secular Jewish family. Her homey descriptions of her childhood in Prague—her relationship with her grandmother, being a picky eater, having her tonsils out, skating dresses, and trips to the countryside—were a delight to read. Little mention is made of political matters, because as a child, she was unaware of them. When she was thirteen, however, the war came crashing down around her, when she and her parents were deported to Terezín. She was thirteen years old.

One of the unique things about Dita is that she is one of the few survivors among the child artists at Terezín. Her drawings are on display in several exhibits around the world. Another is that although she was separated from her parents in Terezín, she was reunited with them in the BIIb or the Terezín
family camp at Auschwitz. Very few families were kept together at Auschwitz, but around 17,500 people from Terezín were transferred there. Unfortunately, only 1,294 survived. Dita and her mother were two of them. They were selected by Mengele for transport to Germany as slave labor and thus they avoided the crematorium. In the spring of 1945, as the front grew closer, the women were transported to Bergen-Belsen where they spent several harrowing and desperate months prior to liberation.

After the war, sixteen-year-old Dita returned to Prague and eventually decided to emigrate to Israel. This was another fascinating part of the book. She describes the process that the now communist Czech government required in order to emigrate: the documents needed, what you could and could not bring, how they traveled. All to end up inside a barbed-wire fence in Israel for months until they were found a place on a kibbutz. Her descriptions of life on the kibbutz were interesting, because although she wanted to succeed there, she was not a Zionist, and saw things without the passion of an idealist. Interestingly, one of her longest jobs there was as a cobbler.

The last part of the book deals with her teaching career, her husband, and children, bringing the reader to the present, 2018. Unfortunately in January of 2021, Dita contracted Covid at the age of 91 and was hospitalized for several weeks. She appears to have recovered. You can listen to an interview with her and see some of her artwork at her website: www.ditakraus.com.

I highly recommend this well-written and readable memoir. ( )

These types of stories only exist because of the people who survived them were willing to share their stories like Dita. Her story is one that I became invested in right away. Even without trying, Dita had me transported back in time as I stepped into her shoes.

I was there with her from the moment that her family had to leave and were prisoners in the camps. Which you would never wish that life on your worse enemy. To the moment when her father passed away; and her mother and her were released. Finally when she met her husband, got married, and had children.

Readers of Corrie Ten Boom's, The Hiding Place or The Diary of Anne Frank will want to pick up a copy of this book to read. This book is not one to be missed. My heart broke but was mended at the same time while reading this book. ( )