This continues Cilka's story from the Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka's Journey continues after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau only she isn't liberated she is charged as a collaborator and sent to a Siberian gulag. Now she is might be lucky again and taken under the wing of one of camps doctors and is asked to help in the hospital but can she do it, to save her life?

This book is fiction, but it is so easy to see it really happening to some of the women of that era, and how horrible it must have been for them. This book is such a powerful book to tell what happened to this one woman after the supposed liberation, and how she had to keep her hope alive even longer when it would have been so much easier to just give up. This is a not to be missed book of the year, and would also make a great book club book as well. It is one of those books you can not say enough about as Cilka is one of the strongest women I know, she is a hero.


This review will appear on my blog on 1 Oct

Another amazing novel by this author!! Cilka's Journey is about a Jewish Holocaust survivor who is liberated out of Auschwitz but then imprisoned in a Siberian work prison. It is a sad story overall, but it is infused with hope and love and one woman's strength.

Saturday, I was checking e-mail and opened one from Netgalley...to my surprise, it was Cilka's Journey; read now, it said. So, Saturday evening and Sunday I was reading Cilka's Journey on my phone (gotta get a Kindle).

I have been anticipating this book since I saw some hype on Instagram! But I figured I would be the first to get it in October (when it comes out)! After reading it, I would have to say it is definitely one of my top five of this year! I even think that I liked it better than the Tattooist!

Cilka was a friend of Gita and Lane's in The Tattooist of Auschwitz. So, from Auschwitz we follow her 'journey'...and what a path it was!

I read this book "blind" (if you will) going into this book not knowing if it was going to be her journey TO Auschwitz or after the camp was released (for lack of a better word). And, I'm not going to say anything or give anything away because it is such an impactful story.

Suffice it say Cilka is one of the most captivating, heartfelt and brave women of her time. Enduring horrific atrocities, Cilka survives her untoward situations the best way she knows how, becoming blank in her soul in order to live.

However, Cilka has a compassion for others that exceeds the human heart! Taking care of others often gets her into trouble...but can help others in many ways! She is a beacon of light in this dark time.

This book may be about a dark time in history, but this book serves as a lovely show of endurance, friends who become family, so much compassion for your fellow man and love. Love is the biggest strength we are gifted with in this life.

I hope that everyone feels the same as I do about this book... but, I know that may not be the case. However, in my humble opinion, I give this book the shiniest 5 stars!!!!

I just finished an advanced copy from NetGalley of Heather Morris’ “Cilka’s Journey”. This book is the sequel to “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”. It is a fictional novel based on factual information about Cilka and her release from Auschwitz and subsequent imprisonment in a forced labor camp in Russia. If you read the first novel then you know who Cilka was. She was a prisoner of Auschwitz who was abused and mistreated and forced to do unimaginable things to live.

The story is an eye opening lesson in the atrocities so many people had to experience. The amazing gratefulness of being freed from a concentration camp to the unbelievable reasoning as to why the Russians felt Cilka belonged in a gulag.

Heather Morris did an amazing job putting you there with Cilka inside the prison. Her strength, compassion and resilience are incredible.I have not read much about the labor camps in Russia and now I want to know more.

Lastly the author notes at the end were a great way to complete the story and to understand where she got her information to develop the book.

Fantastic book and strongly recommend!!

Another fantastic book from Heather Morris. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Cilka, although it was heartbreaking. I loved this book just as much as The Tattooist Of Auschwitz. Heather Morris’s writing style is fantastic and has a big emotional impact on the reader. I loved the characters in this one and like that most of them are based on real people. It’s obvious that a lot of research has been done which makes me love this book more. At no point did I feel like this book was exaggerated or false. I like the factual side, although it does make it a hard-hitting read. I think books like this, that focus on a hard topic, are extremely important and should be read by everyone. Although it feels weird saying it due to the topic of this book, I did love it and I recommend it to everyone!

A sequel to the Tattooist of Auschwitz, this book follows Cilka's journey. As a young girl surviving the holocaust the horror for Cilka is only beginning. The story details the the remaining years of Cilka's life and her incredible desire to once again survive. This will be one of the best books of the year. Hard to believe, but this story needs to be told so that people never forget.

This book covers a very important piece of history but does not really work as a follow up to The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Any mentions of the characters from that book seem forced and gratuitous. The story of Cilka would have been sufficient without trying to tie it to the other book. This period of time and place--a WW2 concentration camp--is horrible and unfortunately all too real. The author addresses both with tact and sincerity. I felt for the characters and wanted to know what happened to them.

As Heather Morris interviewed Lale for The Tattooist of Auschwitz, the name of Cilka came up. Lale explained how Cilka saved his life when she was only sixteen years old. How she was in a position to save his life? Why did someone her age have the strength to survive three years in a place like Auschwitz? Why did she continue to be punished for choosing to live.

Cilka's Journey is the story of a young woman who survived a death camp by submitting to the sexual advances of SS officers. She did what she had to do to survive. Because of her choice, after Auschwitz she was imprisoned in Siberia for ten years. The story of her tragedy, her strength, and her survival is told in this book. While this is a book of fiction, it is based on Cilka's story.. Between the foreign names and the disturbing material, this is not an easy book to read. It is a story that needs to be told, because we must never forget what happened at these places.

Cilka’s Journey is the companion novel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz and was an amazing story. I have read many books about life inside concentration camps but have yet to read a story about what came after. This was my first foray into what it was like in a Siberian Gulag. I could not put this book down and highly recommend it.

Although this book is a work of historical fiction, Cilka Klein was a real person. She was incredibly brave and her story is inspiring. Despite everything she went through in life she still had grit and compassion. I also enjoyed the historical information in the authors note at the end of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley, Heather Morris, and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this amazing book.

I want to begin this review by saying how much I loved the Tattooist of Auschwitz, I read the entire thing in five hours without a break. This story, however, was a step too far for me. Don't get me wrong, there is truth to this, words from the couple themselves, but I am such a purist that on a topic such as The Holocaust, in a place such as Auschwitz, I believe we owe it to those who endured it to work in fact. Their testimonies are painful and essential and to fictionalise parts of it is actually very upsetting for me, based on fact or not, and sadly there are an increasing number of books attempting this. Let me be clear, I DO NOT think the author is belittling the true story here, her respect for the family shone through in the first book. I'm sure some people will enjoy this follow on story, but personally I wish I'd stopped with Tattooist because now I'm questioning so much of what made that book so interesting to me..

First, the positives: Cilka's Journey is about a relatively underexplored time and place—the Siberian prison gulags of post-World War II. The author seems to have done a fair amount of research, and the pace is brisk.

The negatives: For starters, the main character, Cilka, is the epitome of a Mary Sue. Every character remarks on her bravery and beauty (apparently, despite spending three years in Auschwitz and at least seven more in a gulag, she never suffers from cracked lips, hair breakage, dark circles under the eyes, welts from mosquito bites, or flaking skin). She is smart, quickly learns the elements of nursing, and has such wonderful bedside manner that patients ask for her, even though she is a prisoner and not a professional. When granted favors because of her beauty, bravery, intelligence, and sheer goodness, she denies them for herself and instead passes them on to others. All that's missing is a halo.

Then there's the lackluster writing, all telling and hardly any showing. We never feel the brutal cold of Siberia, smell the stench of the cabins or hear the wind howling through their cracks, bend beneath the survivors' guilt we're told Cilka feels, ache with the hunger that she must be experiencing. (And I'd love to know how she knew that a certain date was the first night of Hanukkah, given that she had no access to a Jewish calendar for years.) The book's afterword, written by a historian, shows us more of what life in the prison camp must have been like than the novel does. Several incidents in the story that would have had me sobbing if written by, say, Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See) or Kristin Hannah (The Nightingale) simply had me thinking, Wow, this is written like a fifth-grade book report. For a much better sense of life in northern Russia (albeit in modern times), I highly recommend Lights All Night Long, one of my favorite books of the year.

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, for providing me with a free advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Cilka Klein survives Birkenau only to be sent to a gulag in Siberia, convicted of working with the enemy. From one hell to another she has learned to survive despite her youth. She has loving and tender memories of love from her family but, after being prostituted by German officers, she becomes, along with the other women in her hut, sexual prey to nightly brutal invasions. Women are not protected in her world; rather, they are beaten, starved and abused by their guards and fellow prisoners. She bonds with the women and through these relationships becomes involved in the medical section of the camp. Cilka lives in fear of her friends’ discovering her past and is blackmailed by one who knows the truth. Heather Morris’ description of the Siberian climate, unendurable living conditions, and constant stress of this woman provides her readers with an understanding of what people in these circumstances will do to survive. Cilka shows us that compassion can not be destroyed..

Just couldn't get "into it". Seemed as though the writer was just dispassionately telling the story in a way that did not allow me to get emotionally involved in what was was obviously a horrible situation. I did browse through the whole thing after actually reading about one third.

Ramona Thompson

This is an amazing story of the horrors of concentration camps and survival. Cilka survives not one but two different imprisonments, and in surviving, helps others endure the horrors they are living. The fact that she finds her love just as she is about to boars a train that should have separated them forever, brings her the love and happiness she so richly deserves.

Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris is the amazing “followup” to her prior novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. This novel focuses on the Cilka, the “strongest person” Lale knew.
Ms. Morris has done a fabulous job interweaving the small amount of facts that are known about Cilka’s life with fictional details that result in a remarkable and honorable novel depicting a resilient, selfless soul that through no fault of her own, truly overcame every obstacle that anyone can ever think of, and even those that one cannot, to survive and live on with the love of her life.
I was continually amazed at all she was able to overcome, and where she was able to draw the strength from deep within, when many others would not be able to accomplish a quarter of the same trials and tribulations.
My heart ached for her and for what our people have had to unjustly suffer through now for hundreds of years.
Stories like Cilka’s need to be heard so that she can be remembered, so all the lost souls can be remembered, and so that we can never ever forget.
I was impressed by the amount of research, love, and passion Ms Morris placed into this novel and the information and afterword that was added thereafter.

Excellent read 5/5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

This review is automatically posted to my GR account and will be posted to my Amazon, Bookbub, and B&N accounts upon publication.

Cilka’s Journey
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Having read The Tattooist of Auschwitz, I was really looking forward to this sequel and I was definitely not disappointed.
Cilka survived Auschwitz any way she could, including “ sleeping with the enemy” . Now because of this she is sentenced for 15 years of hard labor in Siberia in one of the most notorious gulags of the Soviet era. Once again, she has to learn to survive. During her stay, she makes both friends and enemies, there are those who help her and those who are her enemies wanting to expose her hidden past.
This was a hard book to read in terms of all the hardships Cilka and her bunk mates had to survive, so it’s not appropriate to say I “liked” the book. However, it is a must read historical fiction with good character development and story lines based on real events and real people. Definitely worth 5 stars.
Thanks NetGalley, St Martin ‘s press and the author, Heather Morris for the “read now” advanced copy.

This book continues the story of a Cilka. The author tells the story in a way of making you feel like you are living it along with the characters in the book. I highly recommend this book to all readers!

This book is about a real person, based on many interviews of those people, who knew Cilka Klein. Cilka was 16, when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1942, where she survives until the liberation. The Soviets charged her as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy, and sent her to Siberia. The book has only a few snippets of Cilka's experience in Auschwitz, it is mostly about her life in Gulag. The author is focused mainly on her, and does a pretty good job in showing Cilka's character, especially her reactions to situations, and how she is is able to prove herself to the people and memories that haunt her. This story is about a journey of Cilka's survival, and the price she paid for it, and it does have a happy end, just the way we like it. And the best part is that the author did not make up the happy end, it is a true story.

I have just finished this heart breaking book. I felt so much sadness for Cilka and for the other prisoners. The author writes in a moving way, describing things as she goes along. Its a beautiful book, one that everyone should read.

Heart wrenching historical fiction at its best.A story about the bravery of a young woman who survived a concentration camp then is sent to a prison.Her strength her desire to survive to have a good life will keep you riveted to the pages. #netgalley#St.Martinspress