Marceline Loridan-Ivens was just fifteen when she was arrested along with her father in France and taken to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. As the title of her memoir suggests, while she would eventually return from the camps, her father would not. While short in length, But You Did Not Come Back manages to summarize the important details of Marceline 's life including the horrors of the concentration camp and her struggle to adapt to the world once she returns "home". The events she relates back in the book are especially horrifying if you let it sit in your head for a while until you realize the book is not a work of fiction but rather a memoir of the authour 's life experiences. People were actually treated at the concentration camps in the despicable manner that Marceline describes and it 's unfortunate that even today some people still hold the same beliefs as the tormentors back at the concentration camps. …show more content…
Written as a letter to her deceased father, But You Did Not Come Back also comes across as a heartbreaking story of true survival and resilience. Like the author, I too am slightly pessimistic about our world today given all that 's happened in the world and politics in 2016 and the aftermath of such events. And it 's why books like this one are so important in that they remind us that what happened in the past can happen again if we are not