Lovely Green Eyes

by Arnošt Lustig

She has hair of ginger and lovely green eyes, and she has just been transported with her family from Terezin to Auschwitz. In short order, her father commits suicide, and her mother and younger brother are dispatched to the gas chambers, but 15 year old Hanka Kaudersova is still alive. Faced with the choice of certain death in the camp or working in a German military brothel on the eastern front, she chooses a chance at life. Passing as an Aryan, Hanka's days in the brothel are full of cold and hunger, fear and shame. She is sustained by her loathing of the men who visit her and by a fierce, indomitable will to live. This devastatingly beautiful novel soars beyond the nightmare to leave the reader with a transcendent sense of hope.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Holocaust, World War II, Historical, Czech Literature, War

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Arnošt Lustig (born 21 December 1926 in Prague) is a renowned Czech Jewish author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays whose works have often involved the Holocaust.

As a Jewish boy in Czechoslovakia during World War II, he was sent in 1942 to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, from where he was later transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, followed by time in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1945, he escaped from a train carrying him to the Dachau concentration camp when the engine was mistakenly destroyed by an American fighter-bomber. He returned to Prague in time to take part in the May 1945 anti-Nazi uprising.

After the war, he studied journalism at Charles University in Prague and then worked for a number of years at Radio Prague. He worked as a journalist in Israel at the time of its War of Independence where he met his future wife, who at the time was a volunteer with the Haganah. He was one of the major critics of the Communist regime in June 1967 at the 4th Writers Conference, and gave up his membership in the Communist Party after the 1967 Middle East war, to protest his government's breaking of relations with Israel. However, following the Soviet-led invasion that ended the Prague Spring in 1968, he left the country, first to Israel, then Yugoslavia and later in 1970 to the United States. After the fall of eastern European communism in 1989, he divided his time between Prague and Washington DC, where he continued to teach at the American University. After his retirement from the American University in 2003, he became a full-time resident of Prague. He was given an apartment in the Prague Castle by then President Václav Havel and honored for his contributions to Czech culture on his 80th birthday in 2006. In 2008, Lustig became the eighth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize. [1]

Lustig is married to the former Vera Weislitzová (1927), daughter of a furniture maker from Ostrava who was also imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp. Unlike her parents, she was not deported to Auschwitz. She wrote of her family's fate during the Holocaust in the collection of poems entitled "Daughter of Olga and Leo." They have two children, Josef (1950) and Eva (1956).

His most renowned books are A Prayer For Katerina Horowitzowa (published and nominated for a National book award in 1974), Dita Saxová (1979), Night and Hope (1985), and Lovely Green Eyes (2004). Dita Saxová and Night and Hope have been filmed.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arnos Lustig was a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald who in after the war who would be voice of conscience all his life, reigning from the Czech Communist Party in 1967 in protest at Czechoslovakia breaking ties with Israel and persecuting Jews in that country and leaving Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of 1968
This astonishing and moving story bring to life the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and World War II written by a remarkable man who lived through them.
15 year old Hanka Kudersova known as Skinny watches her parents and younger brother incinerated in at Auschwitz. A shy girl with ginger hair and beautiful green eyes, she is able to escape the gas chamber selections and hiding her being Jewish thanks to her 'Aryan' looks , (meaning not stereo-typically Jewish) she is able to survive only by finding herself in a place in a Nazi field brothel where young girls, mainly Slavic, must endure sexual exploitation at the hands of German soldiers and officers, daily. the girls must service an average of twelve Nazi soldiers and officers every day, unless they are selected to spend the day with a high ranking officer,
Skinny buries her feelings and learns to survive by anticipating every move of her tormentors, She must listen to the deranged ranting of the Obersturmfuhrer Stefan Sarazin who tells her of his obsession with murdering Jews, and how in another field brothel , he cruelly murdered a young prostitute , after it emerged she was Jewish , by detonating a hand grenade between her legs.

It is through the narratives of the German officers that we get much insight into the Nazi killing machine. It is Skinny's determination to survive that she does all she has to do to please the men she despises , and hide who she really is. while; forming bonds with some of the other unfortunate girls having to live through the hell of the filed brothel, including the stout matron who is executed by the SS , and before her death reveals that she knows who Skinny is and has hidden this as well as the origins of another girl Estelle, whose name was really Esther. Many of the girls in the field brothels were executed or simply shipped to death when the Nazis decided they had no more use for them or when they had offended their captors.

We also read of her life after the war, how she struggles at such a a tender age to pick up the pieces and overcome her shame and guilt, and her conversations with a rabbi who has lost his family in the holocaust, and who gives her food and shelter shows her compassion. This rabbi is a true saint. Before her meeting with the narrator himself and a group of other young holocaust survivors.

This book is important as it deals with an aspect of Nazi war atrocities which have been very under reported , the fate of the young sex slaves in the Nazi field brothels. more studies need to be done on this particular atrocity. Especially as today forced sexual slavery and women and girls being forced to sell their bodies simply to survive is a horror that is simply in most cases swept under the carpet.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Beauty is beyond morality. Beyond good and evil. Beauty is Germany, the Waffen-SS, the Einsatzgruppen, the Jagdkommandos. The bomb that drops on an inhabited site. A town consumed by flames. Anything that dissolves into nothing. A captured enemy division turned into ashes like those vermin at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek. The hand grenade we thrust between the legs of that Jewish prostitute. I pulled the pin and watched from a distance as she lay there, with her hands tied, screaming, and then turned into a firework.”

Everybody should read this book (or maybe Primo Levi's 'If This is A Man' or 'The Drowned and the saved'), to remind themselves of the evil of Nazism, especially now when there seems to be a renewed interest in eugenics (1) (Hitler based his superior race philosophy on American eugenics, as this book review makes clear(2)), when there is an overtly racist USA president in power, talking of shithole countries and contrasting their populations with the Nordic races, and the 'alt right' (i.e. neo Nazis) are gaining more than a foothold. I have had holocaust deniers argue with me on Facebook.(3) I have seen the attempted rehabilitation of Hitler on Twitter (oh, what a lovely man). This is beyond disgusting, it is terrifying. This novel, written by an Auschwitz survivor, tells of a 15 year old Jewish girl, nicknamed Skinny, who is mistaken for Aryan (she has ginger hair and green eyes), and is able to escape Auschwitz where her family are killed and is sent to a 'field brothel' to serve soldiers on the front. 12 a day (sometimes more), but occasionally she spends a whole day with one officer (at their request). The meat of this book comes from close up views of the Nazi mindset portrayed by two officers. One, Captain Hentschel is an art loving aristocrat who is 'kind' to her and seemingly oblivious to the horrors of the final solution, giving her beer and money; the other, Obersturmfuhrer Stefan Sarazin, is Nazism personified. That's him quoted at the start of this review. Here's some more:

..nothing that befalls an inferior race is terrible; it is necessary. It would be boring if it was not also exalted. Yes, brutality was exalted.. The history of the Jews was a story of cunning, fraud and deceit. They were all liars. The worst crime of the circumcised was their assertion that all men are equal.

Strength was more than truth... Power is the bride of the bold. The clenched fist, ready to strike the enemy, was more convincing than the outpourings of all aesthetes or the books written by the hook-nosed since the beginning of time.

It took the rounded-up men, women, children and old people well into the night before they had dug a pit big enough for 5,000 people.. The soldiers ordered them to strip naked.. He would never forget that night, the scent of resin, the silence of those they shot one by one or in groups. He remembered clearly the way they fell or slipped into the pits, leaning forwards or kneeling, as the firing squad ordered them to make sure they dropped inside... The soldiers were anxious not to let those merely wounded at the bottom of the pit scramble out through the mass of cooling corpses and escape under cover of darkness. To make quite sure all were dead Sarazin gave orders for salvoes to be fired into the pit. He set his men an example by emptying several magazines himself.. He arranged for the clothes of the dead to be packed in crates. He had a special tent put up for the representatives of the local administration, including the mayor, to ensure that the men.. could fill in the pit with clay at first light.. He hadn't blinked an eyelid when the Gestapo chief at Auschwitz-Birkenau informed him of the number of transports they processed there day and night, or of the burning of the bodies in their own fat, even though that required using precious petrol.. He was quite used to the sight of a yellowish mass of corpses interlaced with each other like plaited rolls or Christmas loaves, piled from one side of the pit to the other, a mass of arms. legs, stretched necks and lifeless heads. Before falling asleep he relived the operation, the shots ringing in his ears - volleys, single shots - the orchestra of machine guns. But what he saw the following morning was beyond anything he had seen before - it was an image worthy of a great poet, horrible and beautiful, because exceptional... It took his breath away. The dead, piled together in wild confusion so tightly there was practically no space between them, all of them the colour of a yellowish candle, had begun to move. None of the bodies remained still. They moved in waves, they shifted like branches rocked by the wind. He knew they were not alive.. The dead mass was moving its arms, legs and heads, hair was being ruffled, their lips and eyebrows were twitching and their eyes were being opened. Not even their genitals remained at rest, male or female, behind their pubic hair. What was going on? He rubbed his eyes. Huge numbers of rats were scurrying among the bodies, gnawing at the dead, creeping into their mouths and other orifices, into their armpits and between their legs. There were probably more rats than bodies.

The logical conclusion of eugenics and racism. Sickening, chilling. We must never forget. It is to Germany's credit that they have completely overturned this past and created a beacon of liberalism, despite the creeping resurgence of far right groups.

1) as evidenced by the recent secret conference on Eugenics held at UCL. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/...

2)https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/f...

3) My facebook interlocutor started on Muslims (I was decrying unjustified attacks on British Muslims) saying they should 'modify their behaviour', and said if Jews had listened to Hitler's government they might have avoided criticism. I said this was ridiculous victim blaming and nothing they could have done would have avoided the holocaust. She replied 'what holocaust?'

N.B. As a novel this is flawed, not least from a p.o.v. angle, and has some frustrations. However I still give it 5 stars due to the power of its message, which is well articulated.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skinny is fifteen years old, Jewish and alone in Auschwitz. When faced with a decision between the gas chambers and working in a brothel, she chooses to hide her Jewishness and becomes a prostitute, servicing upwards of twelve soldiers each and every day.

Told in flashes of life before Auschwitz and her days in the brothel, Skinny manages to distance herself from being completely overwhelmed by her situation and instead focuses on keeping her clients happy by anticipating their every move. That distance could have resulted in a disjointed story, however it is so cleverly done that it in fact intesifies the horror of her situation.

A large part of the novel is focused on two of Skinny's customers in particular who are both high ranking officers but could not be more different in their attitudes of Jews in general and their treatment of Skinny particualrly. The kindly captain treats her with some modicum of respect and the deranged Colonel are complete polar opposites and Skinny adjusts her behaviour in order to try and give them both what they want. I found the Colonel particularly fascinating yet disturbing as he appeared to be completely and utterly brainwashed into believing what he was doing was the right thing.

Although Skinny hides her own feelings and doesn't exhibit much of her own personality, I still felt an incredible sadness and sympathy for her. As the Colonel describes some of the things he has done and witnessed during the war, her calmness in the face of such horror is truly admirable.

Arnost Lustig's own experiences of the holocaust have obviously fed into this story, and it would be impossible to imagine someone without those experiences being able to write such a heartfelt, shocking and lyrical book that fully conveys the horror of the holocaust.

Read more of my reviews at The Aussie Zombie

[Ellie Midwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Lovely Green Eyes” is a novel that tells a story of Hanka, a Jewish inmate in Auschwitz who passes herself for an Aryan to work in a field brothel for the troops. To be completely honest, I have mixed feelings about this particular story.
On one hand, it’s definitely one of those stories that need to be told as it deals with the subject that most writers (and historians) prefer not to deal with solely due to the emotional “heaviness” of it. A camp on its own was a hell on earth; anyone remotely familiar with the history of the Second World War is aware of that. Camp brothels and what the girls, working in them, had to go through, were - needless to say -the stuff of nightmares.
However, despite the powerful and important subject, I had problems with this novel, and the biggest one was perhaps the fact that I never got a chance to really “know” Hanka and therefore sympathize with her the way I should have. Maybe it’s the way the story is narrated which is far too impersonal and detached but I just couldn’t get into Hanka’s head the way I hoped. Her personal feelings and emotions, which could have been so powerfully presented to the reader, were instead completely overshadowed by the portrayals of the men (soldiers) who visited her cubicle, and by the end of the novel, I felt like I knew them better than her. That was my main problem with this story.
Apart from that, the novel is well-written and is certainly a worthy read. Secondary characters, including the girls, the camp personnel, and the men who visited the brothel, are all memorable in their own way and reveal both sides of the conflict: the conquerors and the conquered, and their innermost thoughts and ideas. I also appreciated the post-war chapters and the insights into how survivors coped with their past experiences.
If you’d like to learn more about this dark subject, give it a try. It’s definitely an important book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written book, considering Holocaust Literature work of Fiction from a Czech Holocaust Survivor.

This one is about a minor Jewish girl who is able to keep herself from a Concentration Camp, and be a part of a brothel that has been established for the service of the German officers and soldiers who are fighting the Soviet Union on the eastern front during their retreating days of WW II.

It was a good book. Providing a different side and perspective, on the lives of the 'sisters' living in a brothel, who served the German soldiers. And one of them being a Jew in the hiding. The book revolves around the psychological stuff the girl passes through; the kinds of German officers who are there for their pleasures, and their treatment of the girls; sometimes the officers' good sides; the ethics and morals of the Germans according to themselves.

Although the book does not have too much of a depth to its contents, it is not shallow either. Some scenes are long, which are good and seemed necessary for their intended effect. Descriptions and dialogues are well balanced.

Translation seemed very well done, excepting a couple of possible grammatical errors here and there.

This one's a recommended read, to understand and know yet another side of the Holocaust and the Second World War.

[Samantha McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book at a Jewish bookstore in Poland, and the premise immediately intrigued me. I hadn't read much about Nazi-built brothels or the girls that were subject to prostitution in them. Lovely Green Eyes is the story of Skinny, a Jewish girl who passes herself off as an Aryan to work in the brothel instead of dying at Auschwitz-Birkenau. That's it. Her occasions with men build the premise of the novel. I made it to chapter twelve before I started skimming; there was no rising action, climax, or falling action to the story. The novel was static and rather boring, despite the subject matter. Yet my biggest problem was finding out who the first person narrator was. The usage of "I" in the latter part of the novel was not Skinny or Adler or any of the German Nazi soldiers she'd encountered in the brothel. The first person narrator was NEVER revealed, and that lack of knowledge, in addition to the pace and characterization, made me dislike the novel. **2.75 stars

[Erika Dreifus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for the first time while I had the privilege of taking a writing workshop led by its author. An unforgettable novel, by an extraordinary man.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arnost Lustig was a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald who after World War II would be the voice of conscience all his life. Even though this is a fictional story it is very moving as it brings to life the horrors of Nazi holocaust. The basis of the book had so much potential but for me it fell short. The story of one girls experience in a concentration camp of which was spent at a brothel for the pleasure of German soldiers and officers. How she managed to survive is almost a miracle. The topic of concentration camp brothels is one that few historians and authors have explored, so I was looking forward to reading it. However the story jumps between Post Prague and a brothel in a camp. There is no clear understanding of who is narrating the book. It jumps from third person and then out of no where it is in a first person which I find is hard to follow. The book is both horrifying and beautiful but not a easy read, it nevertheless gives much to reflect on. I can appreciate that others might enjoy the novel but it was not for me.

[Ade Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to this wonderful writer by a friend who knew of my interest in the Holocaust experience of the human mind, through history, interpretations, memoirs and the creative arts. The book added to the texture of my understanding.
More than this, it added yet more to my treasure of literary experience. Here is a unique voice: sparse, consistent and controlled, and immensely powerful.
You are unlikely ever to come across such a chilling description of the broken mind of a psycopathic killer, lost of all human tenderness, who loses his life to the monstrous ideology which celebrates cruelty and destruction.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are several writers whose repertoire of books I'm in the process of reading. Among those is Arnost Lustig. He is a survivor of Auschwitz and writes almost exclusively about the atrocities of the Holocaust and so his subject matter can be a tough read. This is a book I've had on my shelf for quite awhile but kept passing over because I knew what it was about. Well I finally mustered up the courage to read it and it was as disturbing as I anticipated. Fifteen year old Hanka (known as Skinny throughout the book) whose family had already been sent to the gas chamber is cleaning up operation rooms when she learns that she will be sent to the chamber the next day. She has been passing as eighteen because anyone younger than that is immediately exterminated. One of her last duties is to make a delivery to a room where the Nazi are recruiting young women for a brothel for their soldiers. She uses this opportunity to escape death by passing as Aryan and is selected to be sent to the brothel. Lustig, thankfully, didn't get graphic in his narration but detailed the disturbing conversations, mostly by the Nazi, between her and the soldiers. One of the themes that run through Lustig's books is the length that people, put into absolutely hopeless situations, will go to for survival and this is a perfect example. After her release, a rabbi tries to reconcile her experience with a loving god who would allow such a thing. He is mystified and asks "isn't God everywhere, invisible and omnipotent?" and she replies "He is powerless". In my opinion there is a perfectly logical reason why God seems so powerless in this and so many other horrendous tragedies and that is that he simply does not exist.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished this very powerful thought-provoking novel. It told the story of 15-year old Jewish “skinny” Hanka Kaudersova who with her family was deported to Auschwitz during WWII. Her mother, father, and younger brother are sent to the gas chamber but skinny survives by claiming to be 18 and by chance being sent to an SS brothel behind the eastern front where her Aryan looks allowed her to disguise the fact she was Jewish. She has to service 12 or more German soldiers per day while at the brothel except when an officer claims her for a whole day. She services one of the SS officers --Obersturmfuhrer Stefan Sarazin who personifies all that was evil with Nazi Germany. This quote from Sarazin briefly shows his perspective on life: “Beauty is beyond morality. Beyond good and evil. Beauty is Germany, the Waffen-SS, the Einsatzgruppen, the Jagdkommandos. The bomb that drops on an inhabited site. A town consumed by flames. Anything that dissolves into nothing. A captured enemy division turned into ashes like those vermin at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek. The hand grenade we thrust between the legs of that Jewish prostitute. I pulled the pin and watched from a distance as she lay there, with her hands tied, screaming, and then turned into a firework.” Skinny’s life as a prostitute servicing these German officers was more than horrific! It is really unbelievable that the atrocities of the Holocaust could have happened. The descriptions in this novel really hit hard.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather dark novel with a plausible plot. In order to survive a 15 year old Jewish girl takes advantage of a power outage to join a group of volunteers to a field brothel. Upon arrival at Auschwitz Hanka adds three years to her age, thus when the requirement is for girls eighteen years or older and not Jewish and she is the last to be interviewed and accepted. While she is the main thread in the story, a few male characters get a lot of print. This novel also raises philosophical questions in regards to life, death, and what one does to survive.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translated from Czech by Ewald Osers, this is a true story about a 15 year old Jewish girl sent to Auschwitz and then to a brothel for German soldiers.

[anet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jsem redy na dalsi jeho knizky tak snad se vydari lip, verim ti Arnustku mas potencial, bohuzel tohle na doporuceni neni

[Aleksandra Gratka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hanka Kauders miała piękne zielone oczy, równie piękne rude włosy, gdyby ich jej nie zgolili w Auschwitz, rodzinę, która nie przeżyła wojny i sporo szczęścia. Albo wcale - zależy jak spojrzeć.
15-latka trafiła do wojskowego burdelu, naznaczona tatuażem na ręce i brzuchu ("ku*wa polowa") przyjmowała codziennie dwunastu mężczyzn. Czasem więcej. Udawała, że jest starsza, że nie jest Żydówką, że ma większe doświadczenie niż żadne.
Lustig nie szczędzi nam opisów. Dwie wizyty dwóch oficerów - Hentschela i Sarazina z Einsatzkommando obfitują w szczegóły, których wolałoby się nie znać. I nawet nie o fizyczność tu tylko chodzi, ale o zachowanie Niemców, przedstawicieli samozwańczej rasy panów, którzy na każdym kroku muszą swą wyjątkowość podkreślać.
Autor przeplata historie dziewcząt używanych przez Niemców (inaczej chyba nie da się tego nazwać), ich balansowanie na granicy życia i śmierci z historiami z Auschwitz, tymi, które znamy już z innych opowieści, chociaż Lustigowi udało się parę razy mnie zaskoczyć. Jest tu też wątek powojenny, w którym odnajdujemy próby zrozumienia tego, co się wydarzyło, próby życia z piętnem wytatuowanym na brzuchu, próby życia z piętnem ofiary wdrukowanym w serce i umysł.

Mocna to powieść, dobra, chociaż chyba trochę przegadana. Wizyty oficerów ciągną się w nieskończoność, a część środkowa, czyli wątek rabina, zupełnie do mnie nie przemówił.
Natomiast pojawiająca się jak refren wyliczanka 12 ciągle nowych nazwisk każdego dnia mocno mnie poruszyła.

[Rebecca Dry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant and chilling set in Nazi concentration camp. The author survived Auschwitz.

[Chrissi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up in Prague after visiting Terezin, the concentration camp about an hour from the city mentioned in the novel. WWII and Holocaust history has always both interested and horrified me. In reading Lovely Green Eyes, I was asked to consider another part of this history: what happens to the survivors, the ones who live with the memories of the time, the horrors they have seen? "Skinny" - the nickname she earns at the field brothel - passes as an Aryan, and after the deaths of her family members in Auschwitz, she is faced with a choice - to die eventually in the camp or to join other women prisoners at the German brothel. In making her choice to continue the fight to live, Skinny faces new horrors at the brothel and struggles with the inherent "wrong or rightness" of her decision. The story is told in snippets of time, from her past to the seeming inescapability of her present situation, and it's important to pay attention to time and dialogue in the narrative. It is her incredible will to survive in such a time, and the means by which she goes about doing it, that begs the question, "What would you do to survive?"

[Aveen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was pretty good. I didn't realise until I went to read it that it was fiction, as I prefer real life accounts and stories. However when you are reading it, it reads pretty much like a memoir. Also the Author was a survivor themselves.

This gave an insight into how it may have been for those forced to work as prostitutes for the German soldiers which was interesting and horrifying at the same time.

There were times when reading the story that I wasn't sure which character, or who, was actually telling the story as it almost seemed to change at times and I'm still not sure even after finishing the book lol. Most of the time it seemed to be through the eyes of the main character 'skinny' and at other times it was as though it was through one of her friends from after the war or just the author himself. I am not sure if this was a translation issue or something.

With a lot of the names of officers etc being written in long or multiple German words it sometimes was hard to follow which character was being spoken about also but again that can be expected when reading about the Holocaust.

[SadieReadsAgain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always drawn in by accounts or stories of what people went through at the hands of the Nazi mindset. I appreciated this book because it discussed two sides I'd not really read anything on before. On one hand there were the survivors, those who managed to drag themselves through right to the end of the war & face the no doubt near impossible task of trying to move on. And then there was the side of those who fought for the Nazi side, & believed strongly in everything that side fought for. The writing itself was a bit flowery at points, & this didn't always work. But what I did appreciate was that the author didn't use the subject of the girl's work (as a prostitute for the Nazi army) as an excuse to be graphic. I far prefer reading things about sex which don't really describe the sex at all, even more so in contexts such as this one as the act itself has little to do with it, its a by-product of the power games & coldness of the whole thing. Overall, good book...I suppose it made me think more than I gave it credit for.

[Fatima Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is overwhelming. I can see the scenes that happened in Auschwitz by imagining it through the author's words. I feel for the girls who had to use their bodies in order to survive. I hate the Holocaust. The book itself isn't bad, it's just that it's all over the place! It keeps on jumping from one character to the other.. All the time I have to verify from a previous chapter who "I" was in the next chapter. I understand that it was supposed to be narrated by someone who loves Skinny, but the author could have been more specific as to who was talking or what part of the story we're in.. At first, the scene was at the brothel, during the war, the next one it's talking about what happened after the war.. then it's back to the incident before the war. I mean, there's no consistency with the story. I loved the fact that this was a fictional story based on the author's real experience but it could have been written differently.

[Hannah Simino · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was simply told while still being moving. The author created incredibly vividly the world, the hell, that Skinny lived in, without being excessively descriptive or wordy, and left me feeling satisfied at the end. Very rarely does a novel like this one end convincingly or satisfactorily, but this one managed to leave me satisfied and happy, if not with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

The story was told very creatively, with the first person POV being from a character other than Skinny, and yet the story being shared from her perspective for the majority of the novel.

I would've enjoyed more insight into Skinny's behavior and thoughts after the war, and her thoughts toward her friends and, later, husband, by whom the story is told. More detail about their love and marriage would have been wonderful, but I am being greedy. Overall, a wonderful, hauntingly beautiful novel. Well done.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting, sad book. But I can only give it an average rating. It's worthwhile to read, because of the emotions it brings forward. But there was something very lacking in the telling of this story of a young Jewish girl pretending not to be, to become a prostitute in the service of the Nazis.

I think it could have been more compelling if it had been recounted entirely in a first person voice. There were too many parts of the book where it sounded like a narrator was reporting on events. Also, I would have liked more about how "Skinny" readapted to life in the world post-war.


There was a huge anachronism in the book. It mentioned getting shots for "ebola or marburg". These diseases were not discovered until the late 60's and then mid 70s, and certainly no inoculation against Ebola existed until very recently. That's a mistake a that a good beta reader or editor could have captured.

[Urszula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niesamowicie napisana! Na początku zaskoczyła mnie, a nawet zirytowała poetyckością dialogów, zwłaszcza między bohaterką, a jej oprawcami. Nie rozumiałam dlaczego autor czyni z niemieckiego oficera niemalże intelektualistę. Po co próbuje dorobić filozofię do żołnierskiego prymitywizmu. Z czasem jednak doceniłam jego niesamowity język. Było sporo momentów, które były dla mnie ciężkie do zrozumienia, np. dręczenie bohaterki pytaniami przez rabina i ich dialogi wewnętrzne, które działały jak forma radykalnej terapii na pograniczu przemocy. Rozumiem tu jednak zamysł autora, który wywleka na powierzchnię wszelkie pytania ostateczne, ale też kieruje się najzwyklejszą ludzką ciekawością. Próbuje zrozumieć powstawanie sposobów myślenia i postępowania, zarówno u katów, jak i osób, które przetrwały ich tortury. Książka niesamowita, staranna w swojej dociekliwości, pięknie odrzucająca proste dychotomie, jednocześnie po stronie bohaterki! Bardzo polecam!

[Shannon Mayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult to say you "like" a book when it's set during one of the darkest times in world history. This book is the story about a Jewish girl who has green eyes and ginger colored hair. Because she looked more "Aryan" than "Jewish" she is selected to work in a German Army Field bordello.

At it's heart, this is a story about survival. "Skinny," did what she needed to do to survive the Holocaust...she became a prostitute for the German army. This was after she had watched as her father threw himself against the electrified fence at Auschwitz and never saw her mother or brother again after getting off the trains. "Skinny" saw an opportunity to survive, and that is exactly what she did. Anyone in her shoes, with a will to live would have very likely made the same survival decisions.

"Lovely Green Eyes" has a good story, but in places I found it difficult to follow.

[Lindasp · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was about another aspect of WWII and the Nazi 'nightmare' which I'd never heard of before. It involved the use of young women (aged 15 to 35 years old) taken from concentration camps to serve in brothels for German soldiers near the frontlines or near the camps-- as long as they weren't Jews. It was an horrible situation for these girls but the author was able to describe what they went through in a sensitive literary style and the ending showed how the main character was able to survive mentally and emotionally after the war. Very moving!
I have a couple of small criticisms with this book, mainly in experiencing some confusion understanding who was the focus in new chapters and the changes in time or place between chapters. Also my e-book version displayed some sloppy editing or translation in parts but these were minor irritations.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Faced with a choice of working in a brothel or being executed, Hanka - or Skinny as she becomes known - chooses to live. Because of her Aryan looks she is not recognised as Jewish and is therefore sent to the Russian front and begins work as a prostitute. She has to tolerate some difficult treatment by some of the German soldiers, but others treat her well.

Her story is dealt with sympathetically and despite the subject-matter is not graphic. Ultimately it is a novel about survival. Although well-written, I didn’t engage with the characters and was glad to get to the end of the book!

[Radovan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Asi nejhorší kniha o holocaustu, co jsem kdy četl a že jsem jich přečetl alespoň 100. Připadá mi, že literárně provaření autoři to prostě neumí. Podobným zklamáním byl pro mě Imre Kertész, nositel Nobelovy ceny za literaturu.
Možná by i Lustigovi pomohlo, kdyby od sebe odděloval text - místa, kde v každém odstavci píše o něčem jiném jsou absolutně nepřehledné. Kniha prakticky ani nemá děj.
Takže autoři, kteří napsali třeba jen jednu knihu, pro mě zatím daleko vítězí nad literáty typu Lustiga. Kdo si chce přečíst něco zajímavýho o holocaustu, měl by si raději přečíst autory jako je Wieslaw Kielar, Samuel Willenberg, Miklos Nyiszli, Seweryna Szmaglewska atd.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not an easy book to read as it about a 15 year-old Jewish girl who chooses to become a prostitute in a German brothel rather than face death in the gas chambers like the rest of her family did. Throughout the book there are lists of names: 12 German men, presumably Hanka's quota for the day. At times there is graphic violence and the sex that Hanka has to endure day after day is stomach churning. Hanka's youth, confusion and guilt is all too real as she keeps asking herself if she made the right decision. Whilst I didn't enjoy the writing style of the book and found the story horribly depressing, it is one that will be hard to forget in a hurry.

[Herman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what to say towards the middle of the book Hanka Kaudersova or Skinny discusses the indescribable with Rabbi Schapiro up till this point the book had a brutal matter of fact narrative tone then it changed at first I thought 60's poetic influence not concise, and it annoyed me but after awhile I started to think the author's intension was to show the limitation of language in trying to describe that which can't be explained only experienced and the only one's who really truly know it were all killed even the knowledge poisons the spirit this is a heavy book dark while teaching some hard lessons it wasn't a easy read but still a very important book

[Bluebell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn't perfect as it kept switching back from the past to the future without really explaining things. I found it to be slightly confusing at times, but this book was chilling and definitely has an impact on the reader as you would expect from having such a disturbing, tragically sad content. It's interesting that it was written by a man as it felt as if it was being told from the female character's perspective so clearly. This is not a book for the faint hearted but it has an extremely poignant message about life and the reality that some people have had the most horrific experiences that should never happen to anybody.