The Librarian of Auschwitz dies aged 96: Holocaust survivor who endured unimaginable horrors but kept prisoners’ hopes alive by curating ‘library’ of books before bestselling novel revealed her story

The Holocaust survivor who inspired the bestselling novel The Librarian of Auschwitz has died at the age of 96.

Dita Kraus passed away last Friday at her home in Netanya, Israel, surrounded by her beloved family.

Her story of resilience in the face of the horrors of the Nazi killing machine has inspired and moved millions of readers.

Kraus, who arrived at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland when he was only 14, curated what he later called the ‘smallest library in the world’.

Of these 12 or so books, only HG Wells’s A Short History of the World, dated 1922 and translated into Czech, would remain in Kraus’ memory.

But these and other artifacts found in the trunk of the unfortunates nourished the souls of Kraus and other prisoners in the midst of unimaginable horrors.

One such trauma was when Kraus witnessed starving women cooking human liver in Bergen-Belsen, where he was transferred in 1945.

His remarkable life story was retold in Spanish author Antonio Iturbe’s 2012 novel, which became a worldwide bestseller.

His story of resilience in the face of the horrors of the Nazi killing machine inspired millions

In 2020, Kraus published his own memoir, A Life Delayed: The True Story of the Auschwitz Librarian.

Kraus’ son Ron announced his mother’s death in a moving post on Facebook, saying his mother’s last act was to ask for a sip of water. He later passed away peacefully.

He was buried on Monday.

The daughter of a law professor, Kraus was born Edith Polachová in Prague in 1929.

He only learned of his Jewish heritage when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces invaded what was then Czechoslovakia in March 1939.

In 1942, Kraus and his family were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in the town of Terezin, Czech Republic.

There they had to deal with overcrowding and little food.

Things got worse in 1943 when the family was sent to Auschwitz, where they were placed in a camp for Czech families.

His remarkable life story was retold in Spanish author Antonio Iturbe’s 2012 novel, which became a worldwide bestseller.

A few weeks after their arrival, Kraus’ father died.

Youth leader Fredy Hirsch managed to persuade the camp authorities to establish a nursery for the children.

There he did his best to continue some form of education for Kraus and others his age and younger.

Among the instructors who helped teach the teenagers was the survivor’s future husband, Otto Kraus.

Hirsch also tasked him with handling a handful of books found in the arrivals’ luggage.

While Kraus remembered only the work of Wells, survivors could recall an atlas and a work by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and others.

Kraus explained in his memoirs: My job was to keep an eye on the 12 or so books that made up the library.

‘Thousands of Jews came to the ramp every day. They were driven away, but their luggage was left behind.

In the early 2000s, during a visit to the Imperial War Museum, Kraus saw himself in images of the liberation of Belsen. He was seen smoking with a British soldier

‘A few lucky prisoners had the task of separating their contents.’

He added: ‘If the Germans had found me with those books they could have killed me.

‘Being able to sit inside and not do strenuous work in the cold gave me the chance to maintain my strength and actually got me selected for life.’

But Kraus’s role as a young librarian would not last long. After six months in Auschwitz, Kraus and her mother were among the first of nearly 1,000 women and girls sent to a labor camp in Hamburg.

He narrowly escaped death during the selection process at Auschwitz by lying about his age and pretending to be 16.

If she had revealed her real age (14), Dita would probably have been left behind and killed in the gas chamber along with the other remaining children in 1944.

Later in 1945, Kraus was sent to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany.

‘What happened next cannot be told; Human words fail to describe such a hell. I’ll still try to talk about it because I have to,’ Kraus wrote.

Jewish children wearing yellow stars symbolized by the Nazis are seen arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau

By the time the camp was liberated by British troops in April 1945, tens of thousands of prisoners had died of starvation and disease.

Thousands more were found dangerously close to death. BBC broadcaster Richard Dimbleby explained the horror to the British people in a radio report that will go down in history.

Kraus recalled how prisoners were left trying to drink water from a leaky pipe in the camp’s toilet after the water supply was cut off before they were liberated.

‘The dead were lying everywhere,’ he said. ‘The limbs were bone, without flesh, covered with skin; knees and elbows were like knots of rope sticking out of the pile at incompatible angles.

‘Weakened prisoners did not have the strength to walk to the toilet and defecated where they sat. They also died there.

‘Soon there was no way to get around without stepping over the dead.’

By this time Kraus had become desensitized to the horror. “I felt nothing… I existed only on a biological level, devoid of humanity,” Kraus wrote.

Describing gypsy women eating human liver, he added: ‘Although the meaning of what I saw was registered in my mind, there was no disgust or horror: I had witnessed cannibalism.’

Kraus boldly admitted that he too would have joined them if he had been asked. ‘I hope I would refuse today, but I’m not sure.’

Kraus was on the verge of death when salvation came. After his recovery, he worked as a translator and helped British soldiers interrogate SS guards.

Kraus’ mother died tragically weeks after the liberation. Her daughter, who was only 17 years old at the time, had to continue on her way without her parents.

She and Otto had a love affair and after their marriage they had their first son, Shimon.

They initially settled in Prague, but were forced to leave for Israel after the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948.

In addition to their son, Kraus and her husband also had a daughter, Michaela, who tragically died at the age of 20 after contracting liver disease.

In the early 2000s, during a visit to the Imperial War Museum, Kraus saw himself in images of the liberation of Belsen. He was seen sharing a cigarette with a British soldier.

When Kraus saw himself, he was able to confirm that his memories were not a distorted memory but real, ‘tangible’ evidence of the horrors of the Holocaust.