*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.
Title: I Have To Save Them
Author: Ellie Midwood
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★★★
Auschwitz,
1942: Her entire body trembles as she stands in the infirmary and realises the
horrifying truth. She’s a nurse, but instead of saving her fellow inmates,
she’s about to be ordered to kill them…
Surrounded by thick fog from the nearby forest, Orli stumbles
from the cattle truck onto the frostbitten grounds of Auschwitz. Betrayed by
her own husband for being a German resistance fighter, she has no one left in
the world, and this is now her home.
Orli breathes a sign of relief when her nursing skills
mean she’s assigned to work in the infirmary. Even in this hell on earth, she
can still try to save some lives. But when she’s instructed to assist Dr
Josef Mengele, she soon learns that he is known as The Angel of Death, and is
the most feared man in Auschwitz. At his evil hands, thousands of inmates are
cruelly killed and experimented on. And if Orli is to survive, she will have to
help him. But how can she live with herself if she sentences her fellow inmates
to death?
As she stares into his eyes, she soon realises her resistance work is not over. She has to stay and find a way to stop this monster—even if that means she will pay the ultimate price.
I Have To Save
Them is the latest novel from historical fiction author Ellie Midwood and an emotional
adaptation of the incredible true story of Orli Reichert-Wald. Orli was
a political prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau
and worked in the infirmary, using her senior position to help as many other
prisoners as possible. In I Have To Save Them, Ellie Midwood has created a compelling and
emotional story which really honours Orli’s legacy and will mean that her story
stays with readers for a long time.
Ellie Midwood
has a captivating writing style which fully immerses you into the story and makes
it therefore difficult to put the book down. She is the queen of the Second
World War historical fiction world so I was highly anticipating the release of I Have To Save
Them and it only exceeded my (already high) expectations. The narrative
perfectly captures the incredible courage and strength shown by Orli and the
woman alongside her in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Their female friendships were brilliantly written and I loved that we were able
to gain some insight into their lives after the war.
As with all of her
books, in I
Have To Save Them Ellie Midwood definitely doesn’t shy away from featuring
the dark reality of the Holocaust and the Second World War. This creates a
gut-wrenching and haunting narrative which takes the reader on an emotional rollercoaster
between sobbing, holding their breath in scenes of perfectly written tension
and smiling at the incredible strength shown by the prisoners who never gave up
despite the bleakness of their situation.
The narrative is incredibly
well-paced, primarily spanning the period of 1942-1945. There is a
dual-timeline element to the book with occasional chapters set in 1961/62 to show
the lasting impact her experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau
had on Orli as she is now an in-patient in a psychiatric hospital. These
chapters are interestingly written in second person, contrasting with the third
person narrative we see from the rest of the book. I was hesitant when I saw that
Ellie Midwood had made this unique choice when writing these chapters as writing
fiction in second person is largely a hard thing to do well but it ended up
being really impactful. Referring directly to the reader in this way made us
take on the role of the psychiatrist treating Orli in the early 60s, forcing us
to start thinking about the impossible decisions that we would make in her
care, knowing the horrors she had experienced over the course of the book.
Due to the dark
subject-matter, this story is really hard-hitting but an incredibly powerful
read which will stay with the reader for a long time. As I take my
responsibility for highlighting potentially triggering content within the books
I am reviewing very seriously, I want to signpost you to the trigger warning
list at the beginning of the review and also detail some of the particularly
graphic content themes here. We do have depictions of suicide and suicide
attempts starting in the prologue. There are also scenes depicting the horrific
human experimentation conducted by Josef Mengele in Auschwitz-Birkenau,
including experiments performed on child prisoners.
Overall, I Have
To Save Them is a powerful and incredibly gripping piece of historical fiction
which is a hard yet important must-read story.
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