In this debut work of nonfiction, journalist Keren Blankfeld tells a story of instant love and poignant loss. Her book is full of musical motifs, an homage to the singing talent that helped save the life of a young Polish Jew while he was imprisoned at Auschwitz.
Seventeen-year-old David met twenty-five-year-old Zippi during a work detail at the infamous death camp and felt an immediate connection. Their love blossomed despite the death and despair all around them. But when they were liberated from the camp, their bond was shattered.
David never forgot Zippi. He set out on a search that he hoped would reunite the young lovers, now grown old. Seventy-two years had passed, each of the lovers had been married and lost a spouse, and the end was near for Zippi. But David’s strong will brought them together in a last gasp of shared memory.
The story is heartwarming in every way. In the camp, David sang to the guards and officers in his operatic tenor, hoping they would keep him alive for the entertainment he provided — and he was right. Throughout his imprisonment, he felt there was something else working in his favor, something he couldn’t quite figure out. It was only when he reunited with Zippi that he found out how she’d used her influence to keep him safe, and alive, at Auschwitz.
In order to write the book, Keren Blankfeld relied on extensive interviews, rich oral testimonies, and memoirs both published and archived. She spoke at length to David, but Zippi had already passed away, at the age of ninety-nine, when Blankfeld began her research. In the prologue, she expresses her firm belief that the story of the star-crossed love affair deserves to be told.
In each section — titled “Overture,” “Aria,” “Duet,” “Interlude,” and “Cadenza” — Blankfeld diligently pieces together the pair’s stories. David was from Warsaw, and Zippi, Slovakia. Yet they had enough language in common to trade memories about their pasts. They met in a designated spot in a barracks between two crematories, a tiny space Zippi arranged for them at the top of a makeshift ladder. Although David was broken by the fact that his entire family had died in the Warsaw Ghetto, his conversations with Zippi allowed him to regain a sense of the world that was filled with light and beauty.
Today, when firsthand accounts of the Holocaust are few and antisemitism is once again on the rise, reading a warm, accessible story like Lovers in Auschwitz offers particular value. It captures the miracle of love in a place of horror and reminds us that, at the very moment the world is tearing us apart, certain forces might bring us back together.
Linda F. Burghardt is a New York-based journalist and author who has contributed commentary, breaking news, and features to major newspapers across the U.S., in addition to having three non-fiction books published. She writes frequently on Jewish topics and is now serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
