Heather Morris’ second novel picks up the story of a Cilka, a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau and friend to Lale Sokolov and Gita from “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.” Cilka Klein was 16 when she was imprisoned by the Nazis, and 19 when imprisoned by the Russians … ironically for collaborating with the Nazis. While some of her Auschwitz experiences are told in flashbacks, this novel focuses on Cilka’s experience while at a Soviet gulag in Siberia.

No electric fences are needed at the gulag because the harsh weather conditions prevent escape. Originally assigned to work in the coal mine, Cilka’s sharp mind and language ability garners her a job in the camp hospital where she is mentored by a sympathetic female doctor. Nevertheless, she still endures repeated rape, threats from fellow inmates, and malnutrition. Cilka’s resilience is amazing, although not without cost.

This is a memorable story of human endurance and courage, based on the life of a real woman. It is not necessary to have read “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” first; I read them in reverse order.

Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris is an incredible story. It’s based on a real person and Cilka’s trials and experiences are harrowing and difficult to read. This book is by the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz which is another must-read historical fiction book. It is unimaginable to me that a human being can withstand everything that Cilka went through, as I read this book I was captivated by the story but also horrified.

Here’s what you need to know:

Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival.

After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to Siberia. But what choice did she have? And where did the lines of morality lie for Cilka, who was sent to Auschwitz when still a child?

In a Siberian prison camp, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, including the unwanted attention of the guards. But when she makes an impression on a woman doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing. Cilka begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions.

Cilka finds endless resources within herself as she daily confronts death and faces terror. And when she nurses a man called Ivan, Cilka finds that despite everything that has happened to her, there is room in her heart for love.

This book was a solid five-star read. While I find it hard to read at times, I think it’s important we learn about people in history and honor their experiences.

Order the book now and it will be delivered on October 1.

Cilka's Journey - wow, she will take you step by step and day by day of her life. You will cry, laugh and just agonize over it. She has a heart of gold and will not be broken. She cares more about others than she does herself.
The reader gets a different insight life in camps. Cilka and her friends will make you want to join them for afternoon tea.
This book can easily stand-alone.

I was excited to read Heather Morris new book Cilka's Jouney since I had lloved her first one The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Her second novel is just as wonderful but more painful to read. Cilka is a brave caring young teenager who has been caught up in the cruel Nazi's world. She does her best to survive and help others. She manages the best that she can and makes friends aong the way. In the end she is freed and is able to marry and live a long happy life.

Cilka's Journey is the best companion to Tattooist of Auschwitz. As emotionally invested as I was in Lale's story, I was more so in Cilka's. Her resilience and strength are just amazing. If you love a book with strong female characters, friendship, complicated relationships and redemption through the toughest of times, this is it. It broke my heart and I loved it all at the same time.

I'm not sure I could fully articulate what I felt when reading this story. It was heartbreaking in the most profound way. Cilka's Journey is a story of bravery, compassion, friendship and survival. Its the story of impossible choices and the resilience of the human spirit. Author Heather Morris tells the incredible story inspired by the life of Cecilia Klein.
Cecilia Klein is a child when she first arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. At just sixteen, her beauty is a curse and catches the attention of the SS commandant. For three years she is forced to endure all kinds of depravity as well as witness the last moments of life within the death camp.

When the war ends she is again subjected to the cruelest of fates and is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy. She is sentenced to 15 years in the Vorkuta Gulag in Siberia. Again, Cilka experiences unimaginable horrors. For the first few years the constant rape, threat of violence and indescribable cruelty threatens to overpower her will to survival and her hope for a future.

However, she is one of the "lucky" ones. Instead of the hard labor in the bitter cold she is given a job in the hospital. Its here, despite the death and destruction all around her, she experiences life giving moments of joy and love.

Heather Morris has written a truly inspiring novel both powerful and heartrending; startlingly raw with moments both cruel and beautiful. I couldn't quite hold my sobs in as I read Cilka's Journey." I was most relieved to find that their were moments of beauty to be found among all the horrific scenes from her life, one being when she gave her place of freedom to her friend. Another, was when she finally experiences a love that is pure and not one that wants something in return. This women's experiences, her harrowing sacrifice and courage will be hard to forget.

If you enjoyed Morris' debut, The Tattooist of Auschwitz (as I did), then you will likely also enjoy Cilka's Journey. It's a not-quite sequel that focuses on Cilka, a young woman who was held in the same camp as Lale and Gita during WW2.

Cilka Klein survived the Nazi camps by sleeping with the officers against her will, but she wasn't liberated with the other prisoners at the end of the war. Instead, she traded one camp for another, becoming imprisoned by the Soviet forces for working with the enemy. She lived and worked in Siberia for several years before finally finding freedom.

By the time Morris had met Lale Sokolov, who is the core of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka had already passed away. This story is therefore inspired by what Morris could glean from Lale and others who knew Cilka, in addition to her own research. That does make the book a weird historical fiction/non-fiction hybrid, but the story shouldn't be discounted. Not many WW2 narratives I've encountered reveal what happened to the prisoners who found themselves under the Soviet regime. Morris does take some liberties with fact (i.e. the treatment of Cilka's sister/husband) but it's all transparent in the afterword.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story. I think Morris' writing improved since her debut, which was sometimes a bit too detached. It's so important that we still have stories like this being published, so I think it's worth picking up.

Cilka is just 16 when she is taken to a concentration camp. She endures years of torture, immediately followed by imprisonment in a Siberian prison camp. Her strength is tested again and again. She forms friendships, but seems doomed to lose the precious ones in her life. Follow her story as she shows just how strong she can be. This was an amazing story. I actually had to wait a few days after finishing it before writing the review, because I basically wanted to retell the whole story. This is truly an unbelievable journey. I loved the book!

I was beyond thrilled when I saw that Heather Morris would be publishing a book about Cilka. Like many other readers, I was intrigued by her character and utterly heartbroken by her unjust sentencing after the horror of the concentration camps. It did not feel right leaving her story untold, and I am glad that the author felt the same way.

This book reads so smoothly that I flew through it over the course of a couple days. Morris has an incredible way of writing that evokes such strong emotion while still being incredibly straightforward. I actually found that I enjoyed this book even more than The Tattooist of Auschwitz because it covers a topic in history that I know almost nothing about. I have read many books about the Holocaust, but I have never read one about the work camps in Russia. I was appalled that these camps operated for decades in terrible and dangerous conditions completely unchecked. It is staggering how many people were sentenced to these camps and how many of them died.

Cilka was an incredibly brave and resilient woman to have survived both camps. I would have very much liked to meet her, and it makes me happy to know that the legacy of her extraordinary life will live on through this book.

This is the first book of Heather Morris that I have read, and I must now go and read The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Cilka's Journey portrays the trials, encounters, and way of life for Cilka not only when she was a prisoner in Auschwitz, but also when she was a prisoner in Gulags immediately afterwards. Cilka was only 16 when she was sent to Auschwitz. There she made hard decisions in order to survive. When she was sentenced to the Gulags, Cilka had to make more tough decisions in order to survive. Cilka's Journey is filled with emotional strife and the reasons behind why Cilka chose to make certain decisions. This was not an easy book to read, but I found that the way that Ms. Morris brought us Cilka's story not only engulfed me, but I was not left wondering or asking what if? I highly recommend Cilka's Journey to those who love history. Thank you Netgalley, Ms. Harris, and St. Martin's Press for introducing me to a new author and a wonderful tale love, loss, friendships, and the traumatic and drastic measures one strong woman, among many, had to make in order to survive and thrive.

All the heartbreaking stars!!!

Currently working on full review. I just need to stop crying first.

It is unimaginable that anyone could have endured Hitler and be led from Auschwitz-Birkenau to The Vorkuta Gulag in Siberia and live to tell the story. Cilka’s Journey is the story of Cilka, a real life hero, who at 16 years old was taken with her family to Auschwitz, where she was raped by senior SS officers. She survived Auschwitz-Birkenau only to be sent directly to Siberia for sleeping and collaborating with the enemy. After 3 years in Auschwitz Cilka endured 10 years in Siberia where she worked in the mines, in below freezing temperatures. In the Gulag she was once again raped over and over again. In these situations the common theme among survivors is the guilt they feel for what they had to do to survive. Until Cilka’s Journey I had not read much about Stalin and the forced labor camps in Siberia. Heather Morris has written another outstanding book, Cilka’s Journey follows Cilka’s life from Morris’s first book The Tattooist of Auschwitz but can be read as a stand alone. One quote that stands out to me from the book is when Cilka is in the Gulag and says “This pain is my punishment for surviving and I need to feel it, live it.” Thank you Heather Morris, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read an ARC of Cilka’s Journey and write an honest review. Cilka’s Journey comes out October 1, 2019 make sure to read it, it is important to support works on the holocaust so that we never forget.

The premise of this book is designed to shock. Cilka is sent to Birkenau in 1942. At sixteen years old, she is forced to become a sex slave of the Commandant. She also is put in charge of the barracks housing the women going to the gas chambers. When the Russians liberated the camp, she is charged as a collaborator for working with and sleeping with the enemy and sentenced to a labor camp in Siberia for fifteen years.

The story alternates between Cilka’s time in Siberia and her time back in Birkenau. We see the horrors of what she endures in both places. She suffers horrible survivor’s guilt yet continues to persevere. Because of her intelligence, she is trained to be a nurse. Through it all, she seeks a way to give her life meaning and find a way to compensate for what she did in Birkenau. At times, I questioned whether the author made Cilka just a little too good to be true.

The author keeps the pace up and she never lingers too long on any one scene. This helps the reader as some of the issues Cilka faces are graphic and disturbing.

The book is wonderful for what it makes us think about. How would we have acted? Not just in Birkenau but also in the gulag.

Cilka existed in real life, but this is very much a piece of fiction. There wasn’t much to go on but the author did do a good amount of research into life in the gulags. The book includes an essay at the end concerning the gulags and it’s well worth reading.

The book is considered the second in a series, but can easily be read as a standalone. It would make a book club selection.

My thanks to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this book.

I loved the Cilka character in The Tattooist of Auschwitz and I could not wait to read this boo once I found out it was coming out. It is a tough read in some parts, as the women and men have to deal with so many atrocities. It made me cry for them that they were able to survive and that they were able to see hope when time was at its bleakest. Cilka had been 16 when she was sent to Auschwitz and she survived the only way she knew how. When the war was over she was tried for treason and sentenced to 15 years in a Siberian work camp. It felt hopeless... like she was never going to get any breaks. The kindness of a doctor that worked there helped her when she was at her lowest. I loved the Yelena character. She really helped Cilka come to her own. I could not help it, my heart hurt for Cilka when she had to endure abuse from the other prisoners, as well as not know what else was out there. But this is a story of hope and survival in the end. 5 stars. Highly recommend.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Warning, if you are on a vacation visiting in a city you have never been to that has so much to see and do, wait to read this when you return home. This was my case. I had a hard time putting this down to be a tourist in Mexico City. I had read Ms. Morris' book The Tattooist of Auschwitz and loved that book. She learned about Cilka while researching that book. All I can say that it is powerful. While there are some indirect references to the previous book, the reader does not need to read these in order.

If you enjoy historical fiction, this is a book for you.

Thank you, NetGalley for an advanced copy.

If you have read the The Tattooist of Auschwitz, this is a must read. Gut wrenching sequel that brings the horrors of the hateful Nazi camps and the Soviet forced labor camps to life. Difficult and uncomfortable to read, but we should all be aware of the atrocities. This book will break your heart, but then help us remember that there are/were good people in the world.
I could not put the book down!
Thank you St Martins Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read this amazing book.

I am always grateful when authors take us on little known journeys that open our minds and touch our hearts. In this historical fiction account, Heather Morris details the heartbreaking young life of Cecilia Klein (Cilka), after she was imprisoned and tortured in Auschwitz. <i>Cilka's Journey</i> focuses on the time after Cilka's charges of German collaboration and her consequent sentencing in a Russian prison camp. It is unfathomable that some prisoners from Jewish concentration camps were actually sentenced further for merely doing what was necessary to stay alive. This particular Gulag was located in the harshest of climates and the prisoners were subjected to intolerable conditions. It is an absolute tribute to the human spirit that Cilka persevered despite the constant barrage of human cruelty she endured in her young life.

Morris' writing is fundamental with little adornment, and yet, this type of writing works incredibly well with the subject. It lends a somber feeling to the story, which is certainly in line with poor Cilka's life. Kudos to the author for educating her readers about this little-known event in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Many thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for gifting me with this advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review. This title will be released on Oct. 1, 2019.

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I'm currently all up in my feelings right now 😭 #cilkasjourney #heathermorris #tattoistofauschwitz this book hands down is a must read. The story of Cilka and her bravery of what she experienced in this thing called life is nothing short of amazing. I am sitting here with tears in my eyes and a heart that wants to hug this beautiful, brave woman. She is something we should all aspire to be. "History never gives up its secrets easily. But stories like Cilka’s deserve to be told, and I’m humbled and honored to bring it to you. She was just a girl, who became a woman, who was the bravest person Lale Sokolov ever met. " - Heather Morris. #booksofinstagram #books📚 #bookstagram #strength #bravery #nowords

Thank you, Heather Morris, for bringing honor and remembrance to so many who were persecuted during and after WW II. I greatly enjoyed your first book, “Tattooist of Auschwitz” and feel honored to read and review “Cilka’s Journey”. Cilka’s story follows in the steps of Lale, the tattooist, but it can easily be a stand-alone book. The storyline of this book is based on actual events, and whenever possible, historical documentation was used to adhere as closely as possible to actual events.
It’s shocking to learn that many of the female survivors of the German camps were immediately sent to Soviet prisoner of war camps. Their crime: being repeatedly raped by the Germans while prisoner. The Soviets viewed this as “corroboration”. The camp Cilka was sent to was located in the heart of Siberia; freezing weather, horrible living conditions and deadly work mining coal for the Soviet Union.
There are parts where the writing seems somewhat simple, but I think the writer is trying to stick to the thoughts and feelings of Lale, Gita and their fellow prisoners, avoiding dwelling on the deep history and background of the daily status of the war. I appreciate that style; it dedicates all emotion to the story of their love and their will to survive and help others survive with them.
This heartfelt book is a document to the perseverance of humans during parts of our worst and most inhumane history.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks so much to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for making it available.)

Based on the life of a real woman, Cilka's Journey is the story of a beautiful 16 year old girl sent to Auschwitz in the 1940's. She survives by doing what she must, the only way she can, by submitting to the Germans. When the Soviets liberate Auschwitz, they subsequently sentence her to 15 years in the Russian Gulag for "collaborating" with the Germans. This book is mostly the story of her years in Siberia, with flashbacks to her time at Auschwitz. It is a powerful look at what she and others had to do to survive; the sometimes hard decisions that had to be made amidst the horrors of that time, both German and Russian; the power of friendship; of humanity kept alive by only traces of hope; and the resilience of the human heart. Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an e-arc of this moving novel. The real Cilka was an exceptional woman. High recommend - 4.5 stars.