Lilac Girls
A New York socialite, a Polish prisoner, and a Nazi doctor — three women bound by the medical experiments at Ravensbrück.
The Verdict
Martha Hall Kelly braids three women across the war — a New York socialite, a Polish girl imprisoned at Ravensbrück, and the Nazi doctor who maimed her — to open up a chapter the Holocaust canon long neglected: the German concentration camp built for women. The socialite and the doctor are drawn from real figures, and the 'Rabbits' at the novel's heart — Polish prisoners subjected to surgical experiments — were real victims whose postwar cause the true socialite championed. It can strain to hold its three threads together, but it brings a genuine and overlooked history to a very wide readership.
Who Should Read It
Read it if you want
- The women's camp at Ravensbrück
- A neglected corner of the Holocaust
- Three interlocking women's stories
- A popular novel built on real figures
Look elsewhere if you want
- A single, focused narrative
- Documentary history
- Just one woman's story
Why We Rated It 4.2
Historical Context
Lilac Girls (2016) interweaves the wartime and postwar lives of the American Caroline Ferriday, a fictional Polish prisoner, and the real Nazi doctor Herta Oberheuser, centring on the Ravensbrück concentration camp and the Polish women — the 'Rabbits' — subjected to medical experiments there.
Events Covered
Read It Alongside
Where to Buy
ISBN: 978-1101883082
Read This Against
The same events seen from a different vantage point. The fullest understanding often lives in the space between accounts that don't agree.
Other Books About the Same Events
Frequently Asked Questions
- Are the characters in Lilac Girls real?
- Two are based on real people — the philanthropist Caroline Ferriday and the Ravensbrück doctor Herta Oberheuser — alongside a fictional Polish prisoner.
- Who were the Ravensbrück 'Rabbits'?
- Polish women prisoners subjected to surgical experiments at the camp; their postwar cause was taken up by Ferriday.