Do you ever buy a book that appeals to you immensely but sits inside a drawer of your night table for months until you pull it out, remembering how wonderful the back copy and cover looked in the book store when you bought it? I suppose it was a year ago that I picked up Those Who Saved Us by Jenna Blum. Maybe not quite so long, but it bothered me for a long time that I wasn’t reading it. I knew in my heart it was a book that would hold meaning for me on so many levels. Like the author, I helped interview Holocaust survivors with the Shoah Foundation. It was an experience that I think about often. Those brief moments with people who had experienced such atrocities will stay with me forever. The author took that experience, combined with her extraordinary writing talent, and created a story that completely enraptured me. I love books that I can’t wait to pick up again, and this was certainly one.
Like Sarah’s Key, which my book club read last year, this is a Holocaust novel, and it also weaves in and out of the past to the present to show the effects of the experience on survivors and their family members. Only this book isn’t necessarily about the Jewish victims of WWII; it’s about the Germans and how they not only survived but how they have dealt with the past. I have to admit that this was an interesting perspective for me to read about. I have long struggled with the reality of the Holocaust, that 6,000,000 Jews died for no reason. But I have seldom thought about the German citizens who took part in the experience, some willing and some not so willing, and I admit to not always having sympathy for them. Those Who Saved Us offers a new perspective: that of an ordinary German citizen during World War II. Many risked their lives to hide Jews, many didn’t. Some joined the resistance. Some did what they could to survive. This book tells us about one of these women.
Her name was Anna. She lived in Weimar, Germany. Right before the Nazi invasion, she started a relationship with a Jewish doctor named Max Stern. She was young and being raised by a cruel strict father who she couldn’t tell about her relationship. When she finds out that Max is associated with the Jewish resistance, she hides him in her father’s home. The experience is quite thrilling for her as that is when their relationship becomes romantic.
One night, while a group of Nazi soldiers are in the house, they hear a “mouse” (which is Max sneezing from a dreadful cold), and the next day, her father turns him into the Gestapo. Anna, pregnant with Max’s child, leaves home and flees to another member of the resistance who Max had put her in touch with her before his disappearance. Deeply in love with Max, she lives each day praying for his safety but the reality slowly unveils itself and what transpires after that is a story of torture and survival. She was definitely one woman who despised the Nazis but had to bite her lip and suffer through some excruciating circumstances for many years until the war ended. Her daughter, Trudie, is also a victim of the times.
Fast forward 50 years later and Anna and Trudie are living in Minnesota. Anna has never spoken of her past to Trudie, and Trudie has never understood her past nor knew the truth about her father. Now a Professor of German history, Trudie is working on a project (much like the Shoah Foundation) to record stories of Germans living in the area that survived WW2. She is also trying to understand her own past as her mother is marching toward the end of her life.
While the ending is somewhat contrived and predictable, I have to say that I didn’t mind. The story ended the way it needed to. This book is further proof that the Holocaust is a period of history we must never forget.
I am so impressed with Blum’s writing abilities. I read that she created this story on a trip to Weimer and dreamed of the character for 10 years before she wrote this book. What a superb job she did. I was truly transported back in time, and the story made me ask myself so many questions about this difficult time period that I think of all too often.
Yes, I recommend this book. It’s riveting, thought-provoking, disturbing at times, but ultimately, rewarding.
Now I need to choose my next book. What is on your bedside table this summer?
Recent Comments