All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

 

I wish I could remember where I'd first heard about All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner. It's the true telling of the life of  Mildred Harnack, told by her great-great-niece. Harnack was the leader of the largest anti-Nazi resistance group in Germany. As an American. It was very likely that she was the only American in the German Resistance.

She immediately turned against Hitler as she observed his rise to power. She devoted herself to bringing him down, well before others were concerned about what a Hitler-led Germany might be like.

This book tells the tale of a heroic American woman. It was inspiring. But I found it even more disturbing. For sure. It  reaffirmed my conviction that yes, it can happen again, and it can happen here! There were so many parallels to what was going on in Germany in the 1930s and what is going on in the United States right now.

Here are a few quotes from the book, just to give you a taste. And I will leave it at that.

They're convinced that Germans will revolt against this lunatic politician. It's just a matter of time.

...

It's essentially impossible to find a condom in Berlin or anywhere else in Germany. Contraception was readily available in major cities by the end of the Weimar Republic. Vending machines dispensed condoms in men's public restrooms. Clinics provided free condoms. Now they're illegal.

...

Newspapers carry stories about German gynecologists facing criminal charges. Gynecologists may receive the death penalty if they are found guilty of terminating an unwanted pregnancy, but only if the woman is Aryan, "racially pure." There is no penalty for terminating the pregnancy of a woman who is "racially inferior."

...

At seventeen he joined Hitler Youth. The full name - Hitlerjugend, Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend (Hilter Youth, League of German Worker Youth) - emphasizes the poor, working-class origins of many of its recruits.

... 

 It is now a crime to criticize the Nazi government. The Malicious Practices Act prohibits Germans from expressing their disapproval about anything Hitler says or does. Even a joke could bring the Gestapo to your door. Newspapers and magazines that once lampooned the Nazi Party go silent.

...

The Circle discusses and debates - often heatedly - the central question: Stay or go? Stay and risk arrest, imprisonment, death? Go and abandon Germany to the Nazis, who are hell-bent on destroying it?

...

Every day, Nazi propaganda disseminates misinformation and false promises. Every day, Hitler wins more German hearts and minds. And it's all happening so fast.

...

We look upon the German movement for liberation and its leader, our Chancellor, as a gift of God! 

...

Predicting what will happen next is as alarming as it is inconceivable.

...

 Hitler orders the Ministry of Justice to retroactively legalize what has happened, promising to deliver a speech that will explain everything.

...

Gangsters. Germany is being governed by gangsters.

...

... the recognition that Germany isn't the country she once loved can't be avoided. The cruelty, the barbarity, the outright sadism, are horrifying. Still, she holds on to the hope that fascism can be fought.

...

Democracies seem to be toppling everywhere; iron-fisted dictators rule the day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Address Unknown

I read about Address Unknown by (Katherine) Kressmann Taylor on Renee's Reading Group. Wow! What a powerful little novel. At under 60 pages, I'd consider it more of a novella. But wow! The edition I read had an introduction by a teacher who had lived through World War II and an by Kressmann Taylor's son, Charles Douglas Taylor. Both enriched the story quite a bit.

Address Unknown is an epistolary novel with the letters being written by two men who, at the start of the novel, are partners in an art gallery in San Francisco. Max is a Jew who remains in San Francisco and Martin is a German (non-Jew) who returns to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power. It portrays the insidious spread of Nazism and how that destroys what was a strong friendship.

From Goodreads:

Originally published in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an international sensation. Credited with exposing the dangers of Nazism to American readers early on, it is also a scathing indictment of fascist movements around the world and a harrowing exposé of the power of the pen as a weapon. A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship - and society - poisoned by extremism, Address Unknown remains hauntingly and painfully relevant today. 

 

 

I recently re-read The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger. It's the book my synagogue book club is discussing this month for a Holocaust Remembrance observance. I read it last spring and wanted to refresh my mind before leading the discussion (or participating in the discussion). I'd gotten it as an Amazon Prime First Read, enjoyed it and thought it would make for a good, slightly different discussion.

After I reread The Star and the Shamrock, I immediately purchased the sequel, The Emerald Horizon, and quickly devoured that one. I think I found The Emerald Horizon a more satisfying read and truthfully, I think that this book would make for a better discussion, but only if The Star and the Shamrock is read first.

In The Star and the Shamrock, Ariella Bannon puts her children, Liesl and Erich, on the Kindertransport out of Germany. She's connected with her missing husband's cousin in England. Cousin Elizabeth will take the children off the train and will care for them until Ariella is able to be with them again. The Star and the Shamrock is about Ariella's difficult decision and the life the children come to have with Elizabeth - first in England and eventually in  Northern Ireland. It's primarily the story of Elizabeth, Liesl and Erich. We don't learn much more about  Ariella or what is happening to her back in Germany.

The Emerald Horizon picks up where The Star and the Shamrock left off. The sequel has two storylines going. We learn about Ariella's life during the war as we continue to learn about the children's lives in Ireland at the end of the war. Ireland at the end of the war is a place of uncertainty for the children of the Kindertransport as they wonder the fate of their families left behind in their home countries and what that will mean for their futures. Berlin at the end of the war remains an extremely dangerous place. Germany might have surrendered but conditions are still grim and it is impossible to know who can be trusted.

Of course what drives Ariella forward is the determination to be reunited with her children. That is something I can definitely relate to.

Grainger keeps adding books to The Star and the Shamrock series. Currently, there are two more novels. Each was declared to be the last in the series so who knows what might be coming. The Hard Way Home is about Liesl's university years and The World Starts Anew which picks up Erich's story in the 1950s. I'm on the fence about whether I'll read on, but I would highly recommend the first two novels in the series.

Send for Me

 

Send for Me, Lauren Fox's semi-autobiographical historical fiction novel, was quite different from what I expected. It's certainly not your typical World War II novel although that's when a good part of the story is set.

Unlike other novels which have alternating storylines between present day adults and their grandparents during World War II, the format of this is not the stand one of alternating chapters or even anything like this.

Similar to the way the author's style is lyrical and poetic, the storylines meander in a less formal structure.  It's a character driven novel and you really feel the love and the ache of loss between the family members.

The two main characters are Annelise and her granddaughter, Clare. Annelise is a young woman when things in Germany start to become uncomfortable for Jews. She's a dreamer and is always looking for the next great thing. She works with her parents in their bakery where she meets the man she will marry. When things get impossible for the Jews in Germany, Annelise and her husband have the opportunity to leave Germany and head to the United States. But what about Annelise's parents?

In present day Wisconsin, Annelise's granddaughter, Clare is  going through some tough times when she finds her grandmother's letters and comes to some realization about the importance of family connections.

Fox's author's note at the end of the novel added an extra dimension to the experience of reading this fairly short  novel.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's first novel, written in 1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther, was the classic novel that Books and Beer Club selected to read this month. We weren't sure if we were going to attempt a Zoom book club meeting or miss another month. Mid-month, one of the members suggested this "short" book so that we could read it and be ready for our normal meeting date.

This is definitely a book that I never would have selected on my own. Written in German and translated into English, some of the language was a bit flowery and "old" for me. The story, however, is timeless. Werther is a young man who is resisting what society - and his mother - would have him to - go into diplomatic service - so he can pursue the arts. He's a passionate young man and believes that everyone should be so passionate. He meets a young woman, Lotte, who is responsible of the care of her younger siblings after the death of her mother. Werther falls in love with the children and falls in love with Lotte. Sadly, as is often the case, Lotte is promised to another. Werther meets her intended, Albert, and the three of them form their own sort of alliance.

The novel plays out in letters that Werther is writing to a dear friend back home with many messages to his mother. Sometimes these letters reference people and things that we're not familiar with as part of the story. At the end of the novel, it is implied that the dear friend becomes the narrator and finishes up the telling of Werther's story.

I'm not sure for whom I'd even recommend a book such as this. It was relatively short and quick to read and was a better read than many of the romance titles that the club has read in the past.

The Lilac Girls

Another book that was suggested to my community book club which wasn't selected was Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. Similar to LaRose, it's another book that begs to be discussed but for many in the book club, I think it would be too much of "the same." We probably haven't read a Holocaust book in a long while, and this book, told from three different perspectives, differs from many other books we've read in the past. But this book would not have been a good fit for our book club at this time.

Lilac Girls tells its Holocaust tale from the perspectives of New York City socialite, Caroline, Polish political prisoner, Kasia, and  German doctor, Herta, a loyal Nazi whose dedication to the party quickly overtakes the Hippocratic Oath. Lilac Girls is based on the true story of  women whose lives were somehow connected thru experiences at the only women's concentration camp, Ravensbruck, during World War II.

Kasia's story, as a prisoner, was most grizzly and probably the type of story that readers to Holocaust novels are most familiar with. Kasia had become part of a teen underground in Lublin, Poland, in the early years of the war and when she gets arrested, her sister and mother get caught up and sent to Ravensbruck along with her.

Herta's story was less familiar and because of that much more disturbing. Herta was upset by Hitler's forbidding women from being surgeons. She applies for a job at Ravensbruck, which she understands to be a "reeducation camp for women, 90 km north of Berlin, near the resort town of Furstenberg on Lake Schwedt." On her first day, she is instructed to lethally inject an elderly prisoner. Her initial reaction was to flee. But her desire to be a surgeon quickly wins over, she stays and transforms into a monstrous part of the Nazi party machine.

I'd read about "medical experimentation" on Jewish concentration camp victims. This novel went into much more detail regarding what was involved with the particular non-Jewish group of women prisoners at Ravensbruck. The experimentation subjects became known as the Ravensbruck Rabbits. The novel says that's due to the women "hopping around the camp" after surgery and because they were the camp guinea pigs. In my mind, it was solely the latter.

The Ravensbruck Rabbits was an actual group of women. Herta Oberheuser was an actual doctor. And Caroline Ferriday was an actual socialite who wanted to make sure that the story of the Ravensbruck Rabbits was told.

Herta's story begs one to wonder just how quickly and easily the transformation from one who wants to save lives to one who is okay with ending innocent lives can happen. No matter how many books I read, I will never understand.

Caroline's story had a component of a "forbidden love" story, full of the soap opera miscommunications and missed opportunities. And as I was reading, I wondered how her story was going to intersect the stories of Kasia and Herta. Caroline's story also brought me back to wondering about what my young mother knew about what was going on in Europe during the 1940s.

I can't say I enjoyed reading this book. Impossible to enjoy. And thinking about what I was reading contributed to one night of very poor sleep. However, it certainly told a different story from two points of view that I was less familiar with. It is because of the different point of view that I am able to recommend Lilac Girls with reservations to anyone who is a frequent reader of Holocaust historical fiction.

Two in a row with When We Meet Again

I'm really not sure what I was thinking when I picked up When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel immediately after finishing Stones from the River.

Both books have plots based on post-World War II Germany. While Stones from the River was set in Germany, When We Meet Again was set mostly in Florida and in Atlanta.

Did you know that there were German prisoner-of-war camps in Florida during World War II? I had no idea! That's what attracted me to this very different book. I wanted to know more. The book gave me some information and inspired me to do some additional research on my own as I was reading. There's a POW camp museum not too far from where I live and I've added it to my list of places to visit in the state.

Years ago, in my book club in New Jersey, we read When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. That's a story about Japanese internment camps. Because I was teaching fifth grade, I was already familiar with Japanese internment during World War II. But at my book club discussion, this was the first time some of these really, really smart and educated people were learning about what the US did to the Japanese during the war. We ended up talking quite a bit about why we had never learned about Japanese interment when we were in school. We decided that it was probably for the same reasons that we grew up believing that  Christopher Columbus was a hero. One of the older women in the book club remembered life in New Jersey during World War II. She remembered that several German families had been relocated to her neighborhood, most probably because they might have been suspected spies. We decided that while Germans weren't interned the way that the Japanese were, these forced relocations were for similar purposes. (I guess I really need to read The Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene. That book sat on my classroom shelf for all the years I taught fifth grade and I never thought to pick it up. Had I, I most likely would have known about German prisoner of war camps. I'm off to add that book to my TBR list.)

When We Meet Again is a love story. A German prisoner in the POW camp outside of the Everglades falls in love with a local gal. And his love is reciprocated. Circumstances keep them apart after the war. (Who knew that German POWs who spent time in the US had to do another 2 years of hard labor in Great Britain before returning to Germany? Not me.)

When We Meet Again is about going through life with baggage. It's about running away from your past. It's about learning how to forgive. It's about looking forward. It's about relationships. 

When We Meet Again is about art. A painting that looks like Emily's grandmother is delivered to Emily, anonymously, shortly after Emily's grandmother's death. Is the subject her grandmother? Who sent the painting? Who was the artist? What is the story behind the painting? That, in a nutshell, is the plot.

The story is told in alternating stories. We read Emily's story from the present day and we read the story of Peter, the POW, starting during the war and ending in the present day. It was an effective way to tell the story.

There were a few things I didn't like about the book. The writing was pretty bare bones. After experiencing the lyrical language of Stones in the River, this language was ordinary. In fact, it was so ordinary that I was surprised to see how many novels Kristin Harmel has written. Parts of the story were very, very predictable. At times I got impatient to get my predictions confirmed. Passage of time wasn't smooth either. At one point Emily mentions that she received the painting months ago. Yet in terms of what had happened in the story, it seemed as though she'd received the painting on the week before.

What did I like about this novel? I really enjoyed learning something new - about the prisoner of war camps in Florida. That was fascinating. I also really liked the way the author ended the novel. Yes, the ending was pretty predictable. But the way it was handled by Harmel was so well done. The way the ending was handled really made the book for me. That very rarely happens.

Now it's time to read a little something lighter.

I'm still thinking about Stones from the River

I finished reading Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi more than 48 hours ago and I'm still struggling with what to say in a review of the book - and how to say it.

As a teenager, I used to love reading sagas. Think A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford or The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel. Stories that spanned over long periods of time and that involved many different characters. Not that Stones from the River was anything like that - except for scope.

Stones from the River starts during World War I Germany. It extends through post-World War II Germany. We learn all about many of the residents of Burgdorf, Germany, the two where the main character, Trudi Montag, was born in 1915.

What is the book about? It's about being different. Trudi was born a dwarf. In German, she's a zwerg. The word is mostly used in a mean-spirited way so has a stronger connotation than the word dwarf does in English. We get to see how she thinks people view her versus how people really view her. What else is the book about? It's about story telling. Trudy has a gift, to see the hidden stories about others in her town. She can then weave what she learns through this gift into stories that either further her own interests or hurt those who have hurt her. The book is also about community. We get to see how Burgdorf comes together, draws apart, comes together... and so on, over the course of the two World Wars. And of course we learn about small time life during the rise of the Nazi party.

Trudy's differences allow her to develop relationships with many members of the community on more equal footing than had she not been visibly different. It allows her freedoms to move between groups in the community without people seeing the real Trudi, the deep Trudi, the compassionate Trudi. Her physical differences, in many instances, make her invisible.

By now I'm sure you're wondering what I thought about the book. I enjoyed reading it. I looked forward to the times where I could immerse myself in Burgdorf and Trudi's stories. Often, though, while reading, I wondered if there were too many stories going on at the same time. Since the plot spanned such a long period of time, there were many characters (all with German names that made it slightly more confusing than it might have been had the names been English) with so many of their own stories. Some parts of the other characters' stories didn't seem to be important enough or perhaps those very same stories needed to be developed more fully. I can't decide if Hegi rushed through parts of the story or if some of the subplots more dragged out more than they should be.

Reading about how Trudi dealt with dwarfism (which I've read is very realistic) was fascinating. And as much as I thought I knew about Germany between the two wars, I learned a little bit more by reading Stones from the River. It wasn't the same old same old Holocaust story, although there were some elements that were very familiar.

Stones from the River is going to be a book that I'll be thinking about for quite awhile. I also think I'd like to come back and post about this book again after my community book club discusses this in another two weeks. Look for that post.

Ironically, the book I picked up to read after finishing Stones from the River is a book called When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel. It deals with Germany and World War II from a totally different angle. Look forward to that review being posted in the coming days.