Dora Bursztajn was only 13 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and set the world she knew ablaze. Forced into the Brzeziny Ghetto alongside her family, Dora was forced to grow up and shoulder a burden no child should bear: keeping her younger sister alive. Bound by love and by her mother's final plea to "take care of your sister," Dora navigates some of the Holocaust's deadliest landscapes, including the Lódź Ghetto, Block 25 at Auschwitz, known by prisoners as the "waiting room of the gas chambers," Berlin during its final bombardment, and a little-known, last-ditch escape effort known as the White Buses.
Drawing on survivor testimony, archival research, and Holocaust scholarship, The World Has Caught Fire is both a gripping true story and a powerful reckoning with how the Holocaust is remembered today. Through the haunting story of one Jewish family, it challenges readers to confront not only how people survived, but also how millions perished and what is lost when their stories are softened, simplified, or forgotten.