Those who survived were left to struggle alone to find their way back to a normal life. PTSD was not a diagnosis for many decades later.

I just finished The Brothers of Auschwitz. I have read many books on the Holocaust, and when I was a high school English teacher, I taught a unit on genocide. The Brothers of Auschwitz is mind blowing and captured all of my senses. Malka Adler made the reader feel they were participants standing along side of both brothers. I felt, tasted, heard, and saw what the brothers did. I also appreciate how Adler explored life after Auschwitz for these two brothers. An amazing book that will stick with me for a long time. Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This starkly candid and brutally raw narrative depicts the very worst kind of hell.

Decades after the nightmare of war itself has ended, its affects on surviving family members remains painfully vivid. The echo of their voices and suffering carries through page after page, leaving me with the impression that concentration camps were liberated only yesterday.

Most of us could never even begin to imagine feeling so utterly forsaken or desperately tormented, never mind facing the complication of attempting to live again after such mental, emotional, and physical brutally.

This hugely personal journey of endurance, determination, and deep-rooted family connections is heartbreakingly grim, yet in others it’s heartwarmingly tender. For the most part, I didn’t find it an easy or a comfortable read. In fact, some passages knocked the stuffing right out of me, while others took time to process and absorb.

But it deserves that respect, as a little more time can be the only thing someone has on their side.

This is the story of 2 brothers- Dov and Yitzhak who were taken from there village in Hungary when they were 15 and 16 years old. They were taken to the Auschwitz camps but lost each other on the way and had to find their own ways to survive both physically and mentally. It is a harrowing read, written in the style from their own words. Later in the book we find out what happened to Sarah, their sister and how she also survived the camps as a female.
This book leaves the reader with an overall sense of sadness of the emotional scars and traumas that never left this family and those that i am sure applies to millions of survivors but nonetheless one which i will recommend to all ages as a must read this year. It is in some ways a beautiful book.

If I could rate this zero stars, I would.....and this rating is based purely on the way the book is written. I have read other reviews and many people rate it highly, saying it's a wonderful (though heart-breaking) story. Sadly, I couldn't get past 11%. I am not usually one to start a book and not finish it. Even if it's not good, I try to push through. This one was just so badly written however. Let's take this excerpt as an example: "One day I was sitting in the shithouse and saw one of our boys approaching....The boy pulled down his pants and sat down next to my ass. He and I began to shove asses.....In the meantime, the rabbi arrived....and thwack, Thwack, Thwack. The boy and I race away from the shithouse with our trousers down and boom, we fall to the floor. The rabbi didn't stop yelling and each time thwack on the ass. " I understand the story is told (and translated) from three siblings' perspectives, but I just couldn't muster the energy to read this.

I’ve read about a quarter of this book but I was getting so upset that I had to stop reading. It’s a very good book if you can handle this type of genre which I don’t seem to be able. This is the first time that I have given up on a book and not read to the end but if I could I would have.

This book was amazing. It is all about two brothers who when the Nazis take over are separated from their family and places on their own in a concentration camp. The story from then on goes to talk about all the terrible things that the boys had to go through and how they had to lean on each other because they had no one else to lean on when they were in hell. What I liked was each chapter was told through the different brother's point of view so it gave more insight and it allowed the reader to see every part of the story and get the characters internal feelings that they couldn't share out loud. While this book is fictional the horrific events that took place during that terrible time in history are real and the brothers themselves are based on real people. This made the story very interesting and sad. It really brings out a person's humanity and humility to read about this subject I feel. Upon reading this book I found out that the story while most of it was fiction, however the brothers were based on two actual victims of the Holocaust as well as her father's experiences. This is a book that everyone must read regardless of its sad subject. Very sad read but I'm very glad that I got the chance to check it out.

I read a lot of historical fiction especially based around WWII, but I have to say that this was one of the hardest books I've ever read. Not in terms of word-level, but in terms of the graphic first-person POVs that the story contains. I read the first couple of chapters and honestly didn't want to read any more because it was so painful and horrifying to read even as a bystander in the future. I made myself go back to it because the simple act of reading it was not even 1% of the pain that these humans went through during the Holocaust. At alternate times, I wanted to throw up, turn away, and cry. The writing seemed a bit abrasive at times, but it fits the mood of the book when you have no food and your brain can't function, just one step at a time. This book really rocked me even to the end when it talks about the continued effects of the Holocaust for the rest of these survivors' lives.

I have read quite a few books (fiction and non-fiction) on Auschwitz and this is book is amongst the best that i have read. Three years ago, i visited Auschwitz - Birkenau, which was an experience that i will never forget. I have also seen volumes of books whilst in Germany of all those who died in prisoner of war camps. It doesn't even bear thinking about! It makes you wonder how many families were just like Dov and Yitzhak and managed to survive against all the odds. This was a very moving story and one that i highly recommend. A well deserved 5 stars.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy. This is my honest review, which i have voluntarily given.

My inbox alert came through and sat in it was an invitation from the lovely people from Harper Collins to read this amazing book. With anything to do with Auschwitz and the little bit that I do know it is going to be a harrowing read. But a story that needs to be told.
When I finished this book and it really did take my breath away. It is such a very real, heartbreaking, raw , honest read.
The events that occurred in that horrific camp is so difficult to comprehend and understand.
Dov & Yitzhak are very brave in not only sharing their story but for re-visiting such a horrific part of their lives.
It is to them that we need to be thankful for as if it wasn’t for people like them then these crimes that occurred in Auschwitz would have remained a secret.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Harper Collins for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my review

I have read many books from this harrowing time in history. This was one of the most graphic tales I have read. It is heartbreaking what these two brothers had to suffer in order to survive. I have no idea the amount of strength required to relive their tales in order to be published.

The book is written in a prose format that is sometimes difficult to keep up with.

Thank you netgalley for the advanced copy to read. The review is mine

I really liked the idea of this book, but I didn’t get on with the writing style. A lot of the sentences were incredibly short and I found that it didn’t flow. Also, it was quite hard to read (possibly something wrong with my copy) as it had a strange set up on my kindle. I gave up after about 15%, but will look out for this as an audio book (or as a finished paperback) to see if that alters the issues I had with this book.
Thank you for the advanced copy.

An incredibly moving tale, that broke my heart and really describing the harrowing torments main characters Dov and Yitzak suffered through.
I always feel it’s important that generations continue to learn, and attempt to comprehend the monstrosities so many had to go through. It’s hard to take and hard to read at some points, and although historical fiction we all are very acutely aware this was based on accounts and survivors recollections.
I’ve read a lot of books on this and it still hurts my heart every single time, this book paints such a descriptive picture.
A definite read for those who are prepared for the absolute horrors to be explicably described.

This is the moving story of two brothers who found each other in the concentration camp and survived the brutal treatment. This is not for the faint of heart because it's told exactly how and what happened to them and others at the hands of the Germans. Quite a read!

This book was received as an ARC from HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book will leave your mind blown and will have that historically significant shock factor that will be jaw dropping. I have read a lot of Holocaust books and they all are different viewpoints telling the same story but none like this. The Brothers of Auschwitz focused on the powerful bond Dov and Yitzhak had through their whole tragic experience and they only had eachother to depend on their survival. Then after keeping a secret for six decades, they finally have the courage to tell their story and it was worth the wait. This one got me super excited to the point where I am awaiting its release date and immediately sharing with our community.

We will consider adding this title to our Historical Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

Thanks to netgalley for an advanced copy. The book was translated from Hebrew and the translation is rough. For a book that will be published in English about a week from this review, it needs to be thoroughly edited because I often did not know if I was dealing with a bad translation or dozens of typographical errors that made reading the book challenging.

I’ve read dozens of historical fiction as well as non-fiction books about the Holocaust. I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in November 2018. The author makes the horror come alive. She deals with the characters’ PTSD (not known as such in 1945) in what seems a very authentic manner. But we have no history of the author nor her experience with the Holocaust. It seems disingenuous to write such a book without some personal background. If she has such, I think I would have preferred to read this as non-fiction.

That said, I would reread the last page of the book daily.

Thanks to netgalley for an early copy in return for an honest review
What an amazing honest account of the atrocities this family had to endure many times we should all thank our lucky stars
I really enjoyed this powerful book and can highly recommend

Dov and Yitzhak and their sister Sarah are the only survivors of their immediate family. Dov and Yitzhak were in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp togther.
This book tells their stories. In a very real no holds barred story of things they endured. The sickness, the death, the thirst and hunger, the smell.
It also tells the story of how they felt afterwards, hiding bread when it's not necessary. Always being hungry., being afraid of trains, doctors and hospitals. How the hardships endured and survived never leave you. How they look at their families now, their children and grandchildren.
A definite read, but not for the weak.
Phenomenal, raw, heartbreaking!

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC.

Where to start with this book? You know these events and atrocities really happened and this is a story of 3 siblings who survived the concentration camps they were sent to during World War 2 and were reunited after the war ended. The book was in parts a difficult and haunting read, told mainly by the two brothers Dov and Yitzhak. . The author was very descriptive about their life in the camps, the death march and how being in the camps affected them in their future lives. I felt this was in many ways a haunting, sad, emotional read and yet I couldn’t put it down and needed to know what happened next.

"The Brothers of Auschwitz" by Malka Adler is an emotional roller coaster. I have read dozens of books similar to this one, but none has ever made me feel the way this one did. The writing was so descriptive, it was almost like reading a stream of consciousness where you are sitting across from Dov or Yitzak and they are just letting their stories come out. Even though the brothers are fictional characters, the events they lived through and the experiences they had were very real for millions of people, and they became very real to me as well. This book does not hold anything back and it is really hard to read at times. The author has an amazing talent for painting a picture of the camps that you can't help but feel the raw tangles of emotion, terror, helplessness...and courage that the real victims must have felt. Unlike most books that deal with this subject, this book did not end when the camps were liberated; instead the author described the lingering PTSD effects on the characters after they were safe. I think this is an important aspect that is missing from many similar books-the horrors did not end for the victims just because the war ended. This book should be required reading in history class. Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it and I fear that the real horrors of this period of history are being whitewashed and trivialized.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the privilege of reading an advanced copy of this important book.