House of Dolls

Gershon Shofman, one of Israel's preeminent authors, once wrote that House of Dolls (1955) by Ka-Tzetnik 135633 is "a holy book." Certainly the most famous and widely read of his novels, House of Dolls, originally published in Hebrew as Beit ha-bubot in 1953, centers on a young Jewish girl, Daniella Preleshnik, in reality the writer's own sister. Three days before the outbreak of the war, the 14-year-old is captured in Poland while on a trip at the end of the school year and transferred to a Nazi women's camp, the ironically named Camp Labor Via Joy, where she is forced to become a prostitute for German soldiers. Formally, the plot is based on the notebook kept by Daniella.