The Light After The War - Anita Abriel

I really, really wanted to like this book. I kept reading with the hope that I would enjoy it more as I got into it, and I was so disappointed in the end when I didn’t. Disappointed because I feel that the story had so much potential, but just didn’t live up to it.

Vera and Edith are two Hungarian Jewish women from Budapest who survived the war after Vera’s mother pushes them to safety from cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. The best friends survive by hiding on an Austrian farm, and end up in Naples after the war, and then Caracas, searching to find ways to keep living their lives despite everything they have lost.

My main issue with this book is that I felt like I was reading a light romance novel, where all the characters are flat and undeveloped, with simple, and completely predictable plot lines. Vera is too serious, Edith too frivolous (so much so that she is completely unbelievable, especially after all she has been through), one character too jealous, another too stubborn, etc etc. From what I have read the author was inspired by her own mother’s experiences during and after the war, and this is why I wanted to read the story in the first place. But there is so much depth lacking from the narrative that I couldn’t invest myself in any of the characters or the plot. Even the predictability would have been OK if there had just been more depth and feeling.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Art of Resistance - Justus Rosenberg

This memoir is incredible! Brilliantly and beautifully written, a story of a few years that lasts a lifetime. I literally could not put it down, and it followed me in my dreams... (I also did end up reading parts of it in the middle of the night when one of my kids woke me up).

Justus Rosenberg’s journey from Danzig to the US via France and Germany during and after just WW2 is quite simply amazing. He left Danzig to study in Paris (a great decision made by his parents at the time), and after the invasion of France in 1940 ended up in Marseille, then Grenoble, then various areas in the Drôme, before joining a US battalion and then the official refugee aid agency at the time (before it became the UNHCR). He spent time working to help refugees get out of France while being a refugee himself, escaped capture to then join the Résistance proper. I loved reading about his experiences making his way around France, living with Surrealists such as André Breton, working undercover in Grenoble (the city where I grew up), and his days as a flâneur in Paris. I really enjoyed the author’s descriptions of flânerie, descriptions that match my own personal way of discovering a new place I call home as well as old ones. I also loved how his memoir is peppered with his own personal thoughts and interpretations of events and possible future events, memories clear as day to both author and reader all these decades later.

Justus Rosenberg knows his story of survival and resistance is incredible but also knows that it was very much a mix of circumstance, luck, place, time, his observation skills, his quick thinking, his education, and also due to how he looked (young for his age and blond with blue eyes). But to me Justus didn’t just survive, he made the most of his circumstances to help others as much as he could, even when his own situation was pretty dire. He is such as inspiration and I can’t wait to read about more of his life (those FBI files sound very interesting!).

Justus Rosenberg will be 100 years old in 2021. His story is amazing, and in my opinion a must read, both in terms of how we need to remember the past, but also because his life philosophy is something that I think would bring hope to many, and maybe inspire many more to be like him. I am certainly inspired.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this amazing memoir in exchange for an honest review!

The Knife-Edge Path - Patrick T. Leahy

Geli Straub, Berliner, ex Abwehr spy, sits out the war waiting for her husband Gunther who she has not heard from since the siege of Leningrad. A chance encounter with a ranked SS member who also happens to be her neighbor leads her to revisit her past as a spy past in order to find out more information about another SS officer named Kurt Langsdorff. Geli takes on the identity of a French woman and closes in on Kurt, but things are not all as they seem...

The Knife-Edge Path is part historical fiction, part spy novel; a story based in Germany towards the end of WW2, and later on in post-war France. It is the story of how evil pervaded through the Nazi occupation but also of how not everyone was who their appearance said they were. It is a well-written novel with well-formed human characters traveling along paths where the balance between evil and less evil is not as clear cut as it may seem. I did enjoy how each main character is developed into a complex being, and that there is no real reason why you want to root for any of them.

I did find some parts of the novel confusing, especially when the timeline jumps around without any real notice. Does the concentration camp scene take place in real time or in the past? When in the past?! And I also found some of the secondary characters a bit too caricatured, their images displaying as deformed in my imagination. There is also an element of the unbelievable in the plot, mainly in the love story aspect, as everything happens quite fast. I couldn’t take to Geli at all, I found her actions distasteful and weird at times (she seemed to be more interested in getting cigarettes from the fat SS officer, even if it meant flirting with him or further, than actually finding out information on her missing husband). There are areas that I wish the author hadn’t cloaked in darkness so much (the husband story for example, was he actually real?!). But these are all minor details, The Knife-Edge Path is interesting, compulsively readable, and could be a good start to a line of WW2 spy novels in the vein of Alan Furst.

The Writer - J.C. Maetis

The Writer is actually the story of two writers, Johannes and Mathias, and the network of people who help them survive the war in Nazi-occupied Austria. It is a story of survival, crime, terrible brutality, and also of love amidst the darkness of the time. The chain of events in the story are very true to actual events in history, and the story itself, while fiction, could easily have been a true story. I enjoyed the grey areas between good and evil, the credibility of the plot, and also the overall likeability of most of the characters. I also enjoyed how well the author develops the villains in the plot, they really helped turn the novel into a historical fiction thriller, rather than it being just plain historical fiction.

I liked how J.C. Maetis decided to forego the usual and most obvious WW2 plot settings and instead used Vienna as the center of the action, and Sobibór as example of a death camp. It introduces readers to the realities of the Anschluss, to how rapidly anti-Jewish laws were forced upon the Austrian population, and how terrifying it was to be Jewish and Austrian at the time. I also liked how The Writer is both historical fiction and thriller, and the initial sense of foreboding that builds up in the first chapters develops into tremendous nail-biting suspense that has the reader fearing the next page but not able to put the book down until they reach the end.

One thing that I would personally have liked to see would have been a better idea of dates within the storyline (maybe at the top of each chapter), as the story jumps forward quite a bit in some places. I kept thinking we were still in 1938 but we were really already in 1942, and had to go back a few times just to check at what point I was in terms of WW2. Not really a huge deal though!

All in all The Writer is a great read, with the right balance of real life events, fiction, and suspense, and it keeps the reader entertained until the very end. There are some moments that probably require a trigger warning in terms of graphic death scenes, but I’m glad the author didn’t shy away from the absolutely horrific unique goal of the Nazi run death camp Sobibór – this is something that should never be forgotten by anyone. I really loved how the novel fits both the thriller and the historical fiction genres, and readers of both will enjoy it tremendously.

Renia's Diary - Renia Spiegel

Renia Spiegel was a Polish Jewish teenager who was born and raised in an area of Poland that was near the border with Romania. An avid diarist and poet, Renia wrote about her life in her journal right up to her untimely death at the hands of the Gestapo in 1942. I’ve read mentions of comparisons to Anne Frank but the only similarities between the two books are that both girls were Jewish and wrote journals. Other than that their diaries are very different. Where Anne’s diary detailed her own personal thoughts and feelings, she also recounted much of what was happening on the outside, even when she was in hiding. Renia’s diary reads much more like a regular teenager’s diary, focusing mainly on her friends, loves, and school, and mentions of what are happening to her country and the restrictions imposed on the Jews, as well as fears and hopes of the population in general are only often mentioned in passing, or in the background. This could be because her diary was a way to escape from the world around her, or just because she wasn’t interested in recounting horrifying events in detail. In any case if you read this book looking for Anne Frank you will possibly find it a little difficult to read. If you read it knowing that you are reading a teenager’s intimate diary, and place yourself in her world, you will see what a lovely writer and poet Renia was.

Some entries are a little tedious, as I’m sure many entries of my own teenage journals are, and some are a perfect rendition of what it is to be a teenager. I really appreciated the epilogue written by Renia’s little sister, Elizabeth, who survived the war with their mother, as it helped place Renia in a world outside her journal - I think this part of the book should maybe be read before the diary as it allows the reader a greater perspective of who Renia was, and where she lived. I also really appreciated reading Renia’s poetry as I found much to understand about what was happening around her in those verses.

I’m so glad that Elizabeth finally decided to publish her sister’s story and that I had the chance to read it. I’m left saddened by how Renia’s life was cut short, amidst millions of others, but hopeful that there will always be people to uncover and tell these stories. We will never forget.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!

The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

I’ve recently been picking up books based on their titles alone, not even reading the summary or other reviews. The title of the book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, appeared to be pretty self-explanatory in terms of content, and as I am always drawn to WW2 literature it seemed like a good choice for me. I had assumed that the book was historical fiction, but it is actually a true story, and was initially intended to become a screenplay. Or maybe I should say based on a true story.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is the story of Lale Sokolov’s arrival in Auschwitz in 1942, how he ends up working as the tattooist charged with tattooing numbers on each arrival in the camps, and how he meets Gita Furman, the woman he falls in love with and ends up marrying after the war. Lale and Gita survive so many horrors, daring so much in order to survive day by day in the death camps. You can sense Lale’s survivor guilt popping in and out of the narrative, something I’m pretty sure most survivors of genocide and atrocities feel at some point or another. In order to survive human beings tend to do what they can. There are many elements in this story that are difficult to read and even imagine, despite the fact that we know full well that they happened.

When it comes to historical fiction I often tend Google things that I want to learn more about while I am reading, and also to check accuracy for my own personal knowledge base. I spent a lot of time doing that during this book - for example when Lale describes seeing a US plane fly over the camp several times, I researched the aerial photos that were taken of the camps in 1944. It sometimes felt as if the author embellished, or maybe embroidered certain scenes slightly, in a way one would do to add dramatic effect in a movie or TV show. This is one of the things that irked me slightly while reading - Lale and Gita’s story is dramatic enough as it stands, they survived something that millions didn’t, and made it through to the other side. After I finished the book I did a little more research and saw that others had felt the same way, even going so far as to point out what events where incorrect or impossible. The author then countered with explaining that she had written a novel based on the life of one person and his memories, not based on fact. So I guess keep that in mind when you read? Or maybe just read this book as historical fiction? I don’t know I feel more confused now than I did while reading!

Another small issue I had is that the novel is written in quite a simple manner, using a lot of present tense situations which threw me off a little. It made sense when I read the author’s biography, because I think this would do well as a TV show - the writing is more screenplay than novel writing. That said the prose IS gripping, or maybe that’s just the story, and I didn’t have a hard time reading it over the space of 24 hours.

And one last thing: I would have loved more background information in many areas. Not everyone knows who Mengele was and what he did; I would have loved to find out how Lale’s sister survived the war; and more information on many areas of Auschwitz would have been appreciated. I have read countless novels and non-fiction on the subject so I knew who and what the author was referring to, but those who haven’t should be able to have the information at their fingertips. I think that is essential in any Holocaust literature.

To make a long story short: this is a Holocaust story of survival and love, a story of a couple who made it through nearly 3 years of Auschwitz to find each other again back in their homeland. It’s a story based on a true story that should be read as historical fiction, and there is a lack of background information.

I saw that the author is releasing a new novel in the life of Cilka, one of the survivors in this book, and I don’t know how eager I will be to read it now that I know that fact may be embellished. We will see.

Auschwitz Lullaby - Mario Escobar

Last week I finished a book based on a circus in WW2 and lamented the fact that the author had completely omitted to add any content on the persecution of Roma by the Nazis, and how there really isn’t much fiction about the systematic murder of nearly a quarter of the European Roma population during WW2. So I was really glad to see that Mario Escobar had written Auschwitz Lullaby, a novel heavily based on the true story of Helene Hannemann.

There are many, many books, fiction and non-fiction, on the horrors committed on the Jewish population in Europe during the Holocaust, rightfully so, they should never ever be forgotten. But there are other people who were also persecuted due to their race, and I do think it’s important that they are not forgotten either. The Roma, who have been systematically persecuted and discriminated against for centuries, are one of these groups. I applaud Mario Escobar for telling their story.

Auschwitz Lullaby is the story of Helene Hannemann, her husband Johan who is Roma, and their 5 children between 1943 and 1944. In 1943 the SS come for her family, and while she is told she is free to go, due to the fact that she is not ethnically Roma, she obviously doesn’t want to leave her family. They end up in the “Gypsy” camp in Auschwitz, where Helene and her children are separated from Johan. After a request from Josef Mengele, Helene, due to her German “Aryan” heritage and training as a nurse, is put in charge of the children’s nursery in the camp, where for a while the imprisoned Roma children, as well as some Jewish children, are able to eat a little better and enjoy clean water and even movies. The nursery ends up being a front for Mengele to keep all of the children (mainly twins) he is using for his horrific experiments, but it keeps Helene and her kids relatively safe for a while, and in return she is able to keep other children safer than they would have been in the barracks alone.

This IS fiction, but it’s so heavily based on truth that it reads like a memoir in journal format. Helene’s voice is strong and powerful, her love for her children is warmth in such a terrible place, and her heart and will to continue despite everything so inspiring. Exceptionally beautifully written in parts, the tone is however often devoid of hope – Helene knew how it would all end, and focused on making each day bearable for her children, rather than dreaming of the future. There are terrible, true descriptions of acts of horror (which one should expect if one is reading a novel based on genocide and extermination camps), and if you are looking for a happy ending, this isn’t the book for you. If you are however looking for a truthful story based on the reality of what happened during WW2, then please read this book.

My only complaint (and it's a bit of a big one) would be the use of the word “Gypsy” all through-out the book. Granted, this was the word used to describe the Romani at the time, and often still is today, although the general consensus is that it is an ethnic slur and should be phased out. Maybe there should be an added note in the author’s note about this? It just jarred me every time I read Helene referring to another woman as a “Gypsy woman”, as well as all of the generic “Gypsy” terms.

I highly recommend this book, and some of the additional reading below. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance copy!

The “G” Word Isn’t for You: How “Gypsy” Erases Romani Women

Genocide of European Roma

Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) in Auschwitz