The process usually provides a participant with a heightened symbolic sense of attachment with the other participant. The act carries a risk due to blood-borne diseases. This is in modern times usually done in a ceremony, known as a blood oath, where each person makes a small cut, usually on a finger, hand or the forearm, and then the two cuts are pressed together and bound, the idea being that each person's blood now flows in the other participant's veins. Because of her relationship with the brothers and her mission to hear and tell their experiences, she sees the world around her differently-which is uncomfortable.The Norwegian warrior Örvar-Oddr bids a last farewell to his blood brother, the Swedish warrior Hjalmar, by Mårten Eskil Winge (1866).īlood brother can refer to two or more men not related by birth who have sworn loyalty to each other. “A state like a weapon depot,” she thinks. After the brothers tell of their initial train travel to the camps with German soldiers pointing guns at them, the narrator finds herself on a crowded train platform observing an Israeli soldier who stands casually with a weapon inadvertently pointed at her. These sections occur in 2001, at the time of the Second Intifada and increasing violence in Israel/Palestine. She reflects on what the brothers tell her, often during train travel to and from their home. The narrator’s interludes set this book apart.

There are moments of hope that stem from how strong these men had to be, including their reunion in Buchenwald and Yitzhak’s work to keep Dov alive during the death marches and in the hospital after the war ended. The reader comes away feeling as if they’ve spent hours getting to know Dov, the optimistic yet fragile brother, and Yitzhak, the cynical and determined younger brother. The differences in the brothers’ personalities and the effects of their trauma gives this book emotional heft. That is, of course, not a critique of the novel but of humanity. As with any Holocaust story, the details are horrific and heartbreaking and repetitive of other books of this type. The language is sparse, appropriate for harrowing, traumatic experiences. The book is based on the true stories of these brothers, as well as the author’s reckoning with their history as a Jew and an Israeli.

As teenagers after the war, they moved to a village in Galilee, and the author/narrator interviews them in their old age. The Brothers of Auschwitz recounts the story of two brothers from Hungary, Dov and Yitzhak, who survive the concentration camps and death marches of the Holocaust. Written by Malka Adler Noel Canin (trans.)

Blood Brothers by Susan Arden