Sunday, October 8, 2023

The Music Maker of Auschwitz IV

The Music Maker of Auschwitz IVThe Music Maker of Auschwitz IV by Jaci Byrne
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

For me it was a strange book.
Firstly I found the title very confusing because of word Auschwitz in it.
Auschwitz- the name of notorious German concentration/extermination camp where millions of people have been cruelly murdered.
Although the full name in the title is Auschwitz IV, but reading other reviews I got impression that nobody bothered to find a difference, and there is, and a big one.
Auschwitz IV - look here - LINK
Author of the diary, Harry Jackson, was moved there in April 1942, that's his relation - ".. we march then to Blechhammer which is a sub-camp of a place called Auschwitz.."
It refers to Blechhammer, a chemical plant located over 65 km from Auschwitz. See here ==> LINK.
At that point I felt quite upset, I felt that using name of Auschwitz in relation to P.O.W. camp which happened to be in a place quite loosely related to dreadful concentration camp is not fair.
I looked for some information about the author of the book - Jaci Byrne - and found something shocking.
In 2018 Jaci Byrne published a book - The Music Maker. One POW provided hope for thousands. I looked into it, it is basically the same text as in The Music Maker of Auschwitz published in 2021.
There is however one significant difference - book without Auschwitz in the title got only 9 ratings, Adding Auschwitz in the title attracted 124 ratings.
I compared text of both books, the only difference I found is that in a copy published in 2021 name Auschwitz appears some dozen times more than in 2018.
No comments.
Now, the actual diary - I found it very honest and touching, but on the other hand the author of the diary had a very limited perspective so the diary is quite repetitive and becomes boring.
The final part of the diary covers time spent with family ater the end of the war and return to England. I found it quite different from the relation from POW camp and very touching, but then - Jaci Byrne, the author of the book, admitted that she added some warm accents to this part of the story ==> LINK.
I loved the final outcome, but it also undermined credibility of the book.

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