The child of Auschwitz's Kommandant
Barbara Cherish is a child of the SS, and the burden lies heavily upon her.
She knew early in her life that her German father, Arthur Liebehenschel, was involved in something terrible, something the family did not discuss.
Only later, as an adult, did she discover he had run part of the Auschwitz concentration camp for five months during World War II.
The knowledge gnawed at her, but it took a life crisis - her divorce and the death of her sister - to spur her to delve into the past and piece together her father's story.
The result is a book in which she struggles to reconcile her love for the father she never knew with the knowledge of his crimes, which saw him sentenced to death in Poland after the war.
“ I do have mixed feelings because he was a complex person. Here's this good person that really tried everything he could to help the prisoners ”
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She knew early in her life that her German father, Arthur Liebehenschel, was involved in something terrible, something the family did not discuss.
Only later, as an adult, did she discover he had run part of the Auschwitz concentration camp for five months during World War II.
The knowledge gnawed at her, but it took a life crisis - her divorce and the death of her sister - to spur her to delve into the past and piece together her father's story.
The result is a book in which she struggles to reconcile her love for the father she never knew with the knowledge of his crimes, which saw him sentenced to death in Poland after the war.
“ I do have mixed feelings because he was a complex person. Here's this good person that really tried everything he could to help the prisoners ”