I broke my cardinal rule and watched the film before I read this book, but I'm glad that I did. I don't usually like to compare book to film adaptation, but in this case, there is such a drastic difference between the two, I think it's necessary. The book was very tell and not show. When Ackerman describes the scene, I'm reading words rather than seeing myself in this setting. The movie was so visually descriptive and there is so much atmosphere that comes from the plot itself. Being in Poland during the Nazi occupation, one can only imagine what it would be like. This is such an important story and I wanted so much for this book to be good but the writing was disastrous. It was choppy and overly adjective. This book was not good and it's a shame because this story was based on true events and someone more capable should have been the one to share it.