Thursday, July 30, 2009

Those Who Save Us - a novel by Jenna Blum


This must be one of the most overlooked non-fictional accounts of the Holocaust. It's truly a gem and worth every minute spent reading it. Anna has never spoken to anyone about her experiences during World War II in Germany. Trudy was only a small child when Jack (an American soldier who was in Germany at the close of the war in 1945) brought Anna and Trudy to the United States to live with him. Trudy's only knowledge of her mother's past comes from a photograph that shows Anna, Trudy and a Nazi SS officer. Trudy grows up in the shadow of her mother's self imposed silence and guilt. Trudy also bears this stigma and carries vague memories of her bitter past. As a professor of German history, she creates a project to interview German women about their memories of the war, and specifically the roles they played in shaping the events of the Holocaust.


As the story progresses, switching between Anna's life during the war and Trudy's own efforts to comprehend her heritage - the reader gets a glimpse of the war from the perspective of ordinary German women... some traded their Jewish friends/neighbors for a morsel of bread, some watched in muted horror at their public humiliation, and some sacrificed their own lives to help those who were being unjustly persecuted. Anna's story is a compelling one .. one that will leave you raw with emotion.. at the ignobility of war, the perverse psychological ties people have to the those who protect them even if their saviors are the most despicable of human beings... and the ability of some people to rise above the baseness they witness all around them to become heroes.
It is very difficult to write a book about the Holocaust from the German perspective, without sounding self indulgent or outright offensive to the survivors of the most horrific event in the history of humanity - yet, the author maintains a dignified sense of respect towards those that perished and survived, while pointing out the small, but significant instances of goodness that existed in a barbaric time.