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Jan 13, 2018m0mmyl00 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Spoiler alert: The Lilac Girls told the separate but interwoven stories of three women who lived during the time of the Holocaust. Kasia is a brave teenager who is determined to fight the Germans. She works as a spy and supports the underground activities of her Girl Scout-type group. She is rounded up with other Poles and sent to Ravensbrück to be “re-educated.” Herta is a doctor with a promising future; very rare for a female. She is offered a plum job at Ravensbrück and goes, hoping to alleviate the suffering of the residents. When she discovers they are prisoners, and not even considered humans, she is undaunted and continues to do her “job.” Her job is to conduct experiments on girls’ legs, introducing foreign materials into wounds she and her staff inflicted on the girls and treating them/not treating them to see what happened. Kasia is one of her victims. Caroline is a New York socialite who uses her considerable influence and wealth to come to the aid of those suffering at the hands of the Germans while she works as a volunteer at the French embassy. Once the war is over, and she learns about the women whose legs were maimed, she plans and implements a plan to bring those women to America to be treated. This story is based on a true event in history. The main characters are all real, and the main events in the story all really happened. It makes for some difficult reading, but it is well written and well researched, and tells an important story about individual people and what they did and what they had to bear.