Lovely Green Eyes: A Novel Paperback by Arnost Lustig (Author),‎ Ewald Osers (Arcade Publishing)

This devastatingly beautiful novel explores and delineates the impossible choices one sometimes has to make when the fabric of the world is rent asunder. Meet 15-year-old Hanka Kaudersova, working as one of Dr. Kreuger’s cleaners in Auschwitz. She and her family have just been transported here from Terezin; her mother and younger brother are quickly dispatched to the gas chambers, and her father has committed suicide. When Dr. Krueger is suddenly transferred to a new post, Hanka fears she will meet the fate that awaits the general camp population. On her last day, she observes girls filing into an office to audition for a position in a German soldier’s brothel. She decides to audition, despite the fact she is not 18 and Aryan, hoping her acceptance will ensure her survival. She is accepted and begins a new career in a brothel on the already crumbling eastern front. The only way Hanka can cope with her new role is by shutting off her feelings, freezing what is left of her emotions. This is the story of her nightmare and her survival. Professor of literature at American University, Lustig is himself a survivor of the camps. This haunting book deserves a large readership, and Lustig clearly deserves to stand beside other Holocaust writers such as Primo Levi, William Styron and Elie Wiesel.