The Dark Clouds Above Us

Book excerpt: Kraków, Poland, 1927: when Evette, a young Polish-Jewish woman meets the handsome and charming Frank, she falls in love instantly. But after he becomes abusive, she must leave him to raise their infant son with the help of her grandmother and friends. By 1938, Evette has started a new family with her husband Eric and her son, and they begin facing hardships and prejudice in a society that is quickly turning against Jewish people. By 1942, the family has been uprooted from their home and forced to live in squalor in the Krakow ghetto. Evette and Eric must work at a shoe factory to support her son and their three year-old daughter, where they witness friends and neighbours suffer horrors at the hands of the brutal SS officers. The family is soon snatched from the ghetto and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. When Evette becomes separated from her husband and children on the first day, she knows she must do everything in her power to stay alive until they can be reunited.