Dita Kraus: The "Librarian of Auschwitz"
Born in 1929, Dita Kraus lived through the horrors of the Holocaust and went on to build a new life in the young state of Israel. Her story — from a Prague childhood to Terezín, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen — became a lasting symbol of courage and resilience. She called Czechoslovakia and Israel her “two imperfect homelands,” forever linked by memory and loss. Dita Kraus passed away on October 18, 2025.
The golden star
When the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, ten-year-old Dita Polachová’s world changed overnight. Her father, a lawyer, lost his job, she was expelled from school, and Jews were forced to wear the yellow star. Decades later, she recalled that first terrifying day — and the small act of kindness that helped her endure it:
“I have a memory of the first day we had to wear that star on our coat. With my friend Raja, we took the tram — we were still allowed to use it then, but only standing on the rear platform. We were on our way to a teacher; since we could no longer go to school, we studied privately in small groups of several children with a teacher. We were riding the tram, and I was worried about what people would say to us, how it would look that we were marked like that. And one man on the tram looked at us and then said out loud, so that everyone could hear: ‘These are two princesses, and they have a golden star.’ And people started smiling. And that helped us so much. That first day helped me a lot — instead of ignoring us or treating us badly, they smiled at us.”
In November 1942, Dita and her parents were deported to the Terezín ghetto. A year later, they were sent on to Auschwitz — into what was known as the family camp, where families were briefly kept together before extermination.
Arrival in Auschwitz
The arrival at Auschwitz marked what Dita later called “the true Holocaust.” She remembered the humiliation and despair of that first day:
“We were waiting for the inspection of all body openings — whether we were hiding diamonds there. And my mother and I stood there, and the despair was such that we said to each other, ‘We’ll commit suicide. We will not tolerate this; we can’t bear it anymore.’
But there was no way. And we didn’t yet know that the wires around — we were inside a building — that those wires outside were electrically charged. We didn’t know that yet.
And we were thinking how we could do it without a rope, without a high tower, without a deep river — how we could practically do it. But there was no way. So we just went on.”
Her father soon died of exhaustion and starvation. Dita, only fourteen, worked in the children’s block under the leadership of Fredy Hirsch — a role that would later inspire the novel The Librarian of Auschwitz by Spanish author Antonio Iturbe. In mid-1944, she and her mother were transported to Hamburg for forced labour and, in the final months of the war, evacuated to Bergen-Belsen. When British troops liberated the camp in April 1945, both women were gravely ill.
Loss, love, and a new life in Israel
A few weeks after liberation, tragedy struck again. Dita’s mother died in June 1945. Her memory of that day remained vivid:
“So my mother took her bag and went to lie down in the hospital, pretending to be sick. And I went to visit her, and she wasn’t cheerful at all. She was lying in bed and complaining terribly about stomach pain. Her belly was swollen. I didn’t think much of it, and that evening my friend Mauza and I were invited by her doctor — there were a few other officers there — we listened to music, there was some refreshment. The next day I went again to visit my mother. I came into the room — there were several women lying in beds — and my mother’s bed was empty. On the bed was just a small bundle tied up — my mother’s clothes."
I shouted, ‘Where is my mother? Where is my mother?’ And nobody answered. Until one sick Slovak woman said, ‘Your mamička died.’ And I grabbed that bundle and ran, ran back, ran into the room and said to my friend, ‘Mauzi, my mother has died.’ And she said, ‘What are you talking about? She just went there the day before yesterday. That’s not possible.’”
Back in Prague, teenage Dita met fellow survivor and writer Ota B. Kraus. They married in 1947 and, two years later, emigrated to Israel, where they lived first in a kibbutz and then in Netanya.
“And we arrived in Haifa — May 16th, 1949. So what now? Well, I had an uncle in Palestine, right? So we wrote to him, but there were no telephones, and the uncle didn’t come. We lived in a tent in an absorption camp near Haifa. And when we saw that the uncle wasn’t coming, Ota said: ‘I’ll go out and find something.’ He actually met some old friends who had come on the same ship, and they already lived in a small village. They said: ‘Come, they have little wooden houses here, you can get a small housing unit.’
So we settled in that village, which is called Bet Yitzhak, near Netanya. We got from Sochnut — that’s the organization that takes care of immigrants in Israel — two iron beds and two mattresses. And each bed Ota carried on his back from Netanya on foot. That’s four kilometers. We had no money, no car.”
They built a modest but meaningful life, raising three children. After 1989, Dita returned often to her native Prague, reflecting on her two homes — Czechia and Israel — both imperfect, both forever part of her. Passed away on October 18, 2025 at the age of ninety-six. Her voice remains a quiet call to remember, to endure, and to live.
