1947 Where Now Begins - Elisabeth Åsbrink

This book, my first of 2020, had quite a profound effect on me I must say! It is a work of nonfiction, based on numerous historical facts, events, people, and references, but it reads beautifully, flowing like a work of fiction. Elisabeth Åsbrink’s prose is stunning and poetic, there were several parts that literally took my breath away. 

1947 - Where Now Begins is based on the thought that the events that transpired in 1947 collectively shaped the world for how it turns today. The book is divided into 12 months, and each month contains vignettes with an overview of an event that happened at that time. Some of the vignettes are ones that we have all heard about, or know of, for example the Nuremberg Trials, or how the term “Genocide” was coined, but others are more unknown, such as Simone de Beauvoir’s first meeting with Nelson Agren, or details of a friendship between a young Jewish girl and a young Arab girl in Palestine. The book teaches us about the network of Nazis that disappears from Germany post 1945 and reappears in places like Sweden and Argentina, unstoppable, with monsters going unpunished. We read about George Orwell and his frenzy to finish 1984, about the UN commission in charge of figuring out a solution to the future of the land of Palestine. We learn about the birth of the Kalashnikov rifle, the tremors of the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the shaping of the Muslim Brotherhood. We also learn about the author’s personal history, a father who survived the Holocaust, a history of other family members who didn’t.

I think it is really important to understand just how many Nazis escaped punishment after 1945, some of whom went on to take up important positions in governmental structures across the world. Klaus Barbie, for example, was an absolute monster and his legacy is well entrenched in the area where I personally grew up (Grenoble, France). Instead of being put on trial he was hired by British Intelligence and then the CIA! Not that they will actually admit to it even though it was clear as day who he was. As humans we never learn, do we? We pretended that Nazism was dead and decided that now Communism was our number one enemy, creating the possibility for one to rebuild itself underground, and for the other to build its own fortress around itself.

As a side note I read a hilarious review of this book where the person mentioned that they got tired of reading about the same Communist authors over and over again. George Orwell, Nelson Algren, Simone de Beauvoir etc were not Communists… Only someone who has no idea what they are talking about would say something like that. But such a comment does however go with the global message this book conveys: the events of 1947 are the roots of deep-seated thoughts and actions that remain current today. The US is still very much more afraid of Communism than it ever was of Nazism, even though the former was mainly interested in containment and the latter with expansion. 

All in all this was a really good read, and I would recommend it to everyone. I need to revisit Orwell’s work as well, his essays were absolutely brilliant and so very on point, then and now.