At just fourteen years old, Dita Kraus arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau and became responsible for a secret collection of books used to educate Jewish children inside the camp. Her dangerous role would later earn her the name “The Librarian of Auschwitz.”
In December 1943, Dita stepped out of a freezing cattle car into the nightmare of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was tattooed with prisoner number 73,305 and, together with her mother, imprisoned in the Theresienstadt family camp. Hunger, disease, overcrowding and death surrounded them, but inside Children’s Block 31, youth leader Fredy Hirsch attempted to create a small refuge for hundreds of children.
Secret lessons were organized using a handful of smuggled books. Dita became their librarian, hiding and protecting the forbidden collection despite knowing that discovery could cost her life.
In March 1944, approximately 3,800 Jews from the September transport were murdered in the gas chambers. Three months later, Dita faced Josef Mengele during a selection and survived. She was eventually deported from Auschwitz and subjected to forced labour in Neuengamme subcamps before being transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where starvation, disease and thousands of unburied corpses defined the final weeks of the war.
British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945, but Dita’s mother died shortly afterward. At only fifteen, Dita returned to Prague alone and began rebuilding her life. She later married fellow Holocaust survivor Ota B. Kraus, raised a family, became a teacher and dedicated herself to preserving the memory of those who did not survive.
This documentary tells the remarkable story of the teenage “Librarian of Auschwitz”—a young prisoner who protected books, education and hope in a place designed to destroy them.
This episode is part of the series Survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution.
Watch the full documentary and explore hundreds of historical films at:
WorldHistory.tv
