4/5: I enjoyed Blankfeld’s exhaustively researched account of two prisoners in Auschwitz who conducted a fleeting and secret affair amid the horror. One reviewer expressed their frustration at the paucity of description of David and Zippi’s inner lives, but in an historical work I’m not sure that their psychology at the time was necessarily available to the author. While Zippi, who Blankfeld was not able to interview, remains an enigma, David’s personality shone through. All in all, it was a gripping read: never maudlin but any reader will know enough of the camp’s terrible history to understand the contrast between the main characters’ extraordinary journey and the much different fates of most who disembarked from the trains.