The Girls of the Glimmer Factory by Jennifer Coburn ~ a Review

by Donna Huber

Hannah longs for the days when she used to be free, but now, she is a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt, a model ghetto where the Nazis plan to make a propaganda film to convince the world that the Jewish people are living well in the camps. But Hannah will do anything to show the world the truth. Along with other young resistance members, they vow to disrupt the filming and derail the increasingly frequent deportations to death camps in the east.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

January 2025; Sourcebooks Landmark; 978-1728277288
audio, ebook, print (480 pages); historical fiction

WWII fiction is one of my favorite genres. I read a lot of it, and the plots can become repetitive. So I love when I find one about something new to me. I knew there was a camp that was used for propaganda films but I didn't really know much about it.

The Girls of the Glimmer Factory is set in Theresienstadt. It is considered a ghetto, but it was a work camp. The main difference between this camp and the camps like Auschwitz is that it wasn't a death camp. The prisoner lived on starvation rations and minimal hygiene. There also didn't seem to be a fear of the infirmary (at least by the characters in the book), so presumably medical experiments were not happening at this camp like they did at Ravensbrück. There were transports from this camp to the death camps.

I learned a lot about this camp. I knew about the cultural events and the staged performances (such as kids in classrooms or on playgrounds). But the prisoners were also rewriting some of the Jewish texts that had been destroyed so that they could be displayed in a museum of "an extinct race". They were also cutting mica that was used in the war effort.

I enjoyed learning about this piece of history, but the basic plot was your typical concentration camp story. There was another storyline that followed a German woman, Hilda, who had been friends with Hannah when they were younger. She is completely sold on the Third Reich. It promised her everything she wanted. For the first time, she feels like her specialness is being recognized. I found her storyline to be interesting as I always wonder about how people could go along with Hitler. I found it ironic that she knew she worked for the propaganda office and that they were having to sell the German people on the vision of the Third Reich by being deceptive. But at the same time, she seemed clueless about what was really happening - like why Hannah had lost so much weight. I don't know if she really believed that the Jews were being treated well at the camp or like so many just saw what they wanted to believe.

I really liked that Coburn jumped ahead at the end and learn their fate many years after the war ended. I liked that a research team had unearthed part of the film and called in some survivors to explain what happened. It allowed for the survivors to also get some answers (along with the reader). I thought it was a really good way to wrap up the story.

Buy The Girls of the Glimmer Factory at Amazon

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

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