The story of the smallest and most dangerous library in the world, told by a prisoner of Auschwitz who managed to survive.

January 1944. Teenager Dita Kraus is transferred from the Terezin Jewish ghetto in Prague to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Only Dita Kraus and a handful of other prisoners survived, after a year of staying there, before being liberated by the Allies in the spring of '45. She observes everything, remembers everything, and narrates everything to Antonio Iturbe: the fear, the companions found dead in the morning from hunger and cold, the forced labor under the beatings of the "Kapos," the periodic "selections" that distinguished the healthy from the sick who were led to the crematoriums.

But above all, she remembers Freddy Hirsch, the leader of children's block 31. In the black mud of Auschwitz that swallows everything, Freddy Hirsch secretly built a school. The Nazis don't know about it. Just like they don't know about the existence of the smallest, hidden, and illegal public library that ever existed. It includes six "speaking" books and eight printed ones. The young Dita hides the latter under her dress at the risk of her life.

The book was honored with the TROA award and has been translated into 22 languages.