December:
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak. 1939. Nazi Germany. At her brother's grave, Liesel finds and keeps, The Gravedigger's Handbook, beginning her fascination with books and reading. Her story of living with a foster family, their harboring of a Jewish man, her friendships, how they and others resist and comply with Nazi rule are an intense and poignant telling of the events and that moment in time, but speak volumes for us today. I found Death as a character, while crucial in giving scope and providing narration, strange and disruptive at times. However, it is a book that stays with you forever ~ and should.
January:
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz - Lucy Adlington. True story of amazing women and the horrors of those able to use others so completely. Difficult to read in many ways. But, apart from the absolute cruelty man is able inflict that others are miraculously able to withstand, the telling could get repetitive and disjointed at times as the author would interject each woman's arrival no matter the time or events surrounding it, rather than provide a cohesively linear story. Not at all saying I could have done any better and I am sure the method was rooted in the desire to maintain facts and authenticity based on papers and interviews that had been used, which I really do appreciate.
February:
The Librarian of Auschwitz - Antonio Iturbe. Based on the true story of Dita Kraus. I will never understand how cruel some humans can be. I cannot imagine living through such things.
World Travel, An Irreverent Guide - Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever. Not the book I thought it would be. More of a list of cities/countries with a bit of travel data and Anthony's comments lifted from prior shows and books with no new material from Anthony. Still, it is always nice to hear his voice.
March:
Resistance Women - Jennifer Chiaverini. I wanted to love this more than I did. It was a LONG haul. While I was thrilled it was a real accounting of brave strong women during unspeakable times - it often felt trite and repetitious. Through the lives of the characters - Mildred Fish, an American married to Avrid Harnack - a German economist who returned to Germany before all the horrors began; Martha Dodd, daughter of the American Ambassador to Germany; Greta Kuckoff a German and aspiring writer; and the only fictional composite - Sara Weitz, German, Jewish student - we get lots of details but I never felt I knew the women. Perhaps, simply my own fault, but it felt more like reading a report than a novel into which you breathe with the characters. Still - filled as it was with details of these incredible women and their group of resistance fighters - it gives the obviously damning and horrible view of those who committed atrocities but almost more horrible - the inaction of those who stood quietly, and therefore complicitly, by - doing nothing - while their neighbors and friends were removed from their jobs, homes, families - first to undesirable areas in town, then tenements, to compounds, to camps. Much like The Dressmakers of Auschwitz - making it clear that while hatred and prejudice were key in the events of Hitler's Germany - basic greed combined with the desperate economic conditions of the depression - fueled many of Hitler's directives and the willingness of the populace to follow them. Removing Jews from their jobs opened up positions for other Germans. Their removal from their homes and the distribution of their possessions directly benefited those ruling and the citizenry as well.
Heavy reads in these months. They were painful, so the going was slow. Due to my own poor education in these matters, I had rather missed how large a role financial greed, obviously combined with the desire for power and general racist hatred, played in Nazi Germany. There is so much to learn from Germany's Nazi past as well as how it has risen from such horrors. Despite pushback from right wing extremists in recent years, Germany has laws against promoting Nazi sentiment on-line and off, wearing the SS uniform, supporting Hitler, using swastikas and hate speech, as well as publicly denying the Holocaust. So much we could learn here... Man's incessant need for power and to tear down others is incomprehensible to me.
Wishing you all the freedom to be who you are, love who you wish, worship as you desire, and tend to your own damn business. I know I got enough on my plate without worrying about what somebody else has on theirs!!!
Live kindly if chaotically! ~ les
