The PLUM TREE

Ellen Marie Wiseman’s riveting debut novel allows the reader to peer into the life of a German teenager and her family in World War II torn Nazi Germany. The author states that the book was inspired by her own mother’s actual experiences in Germany and by the author’s numerous trips to the Fatherland visiting relatives. This is a dynamite novel about a German girl falling in love with a Jew. The novel reveals three engrossing forms of terror during the years 1938 through 1945. The first was the ravaging of the Jews and ordinary German citizens by the SS Troopers. One of the books Wiseman read pertaining to this was Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich by Alison Owings. The second torment experienced by the German families was the U.S. bombing campaign of German cities, backed up by The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 by Jorg Friedrich. The third affliction in the story discloses how the non-Nazi German civilians were treated after the war’s end. This was verified by James Bacque’s Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950 . This was an eye-opening trifecta of maladies combined in one novel. This reviewer wonders what Wiseman will do for an encore?

The milieu for this novel is Hessental, Germany, an ordinary peaceful German village of mostly hard working poor families. The focus is on the Bolz family and their struggle to put food on the table. Our heroine, Christine, and her mutti (mother) work on the estate of the Bauermans, a rich Jewish family. Christine and Isaac Bauerman are in love and plan to announce that fact at a December party at the Bauermans. But before that can happen, Hitler prohibits Jews from employing Germans, radios are confiscated and replaced with propaganda channeled radios, Jews are banned from public buildings, and the mandatory greeting is decreed as “Heil Hitler”. On page 54, Christine and Isaac wonder, “Will we ever be allowed to be together, to live like everyone else, happily married, with a house and children, to enjoy the most basic human rights?” This is a very sad novel. Slowly but surely, the Jews of Hessental are shipped by train to Dachau. On page 150, Christine thinks she saw Isaac and his family on the Dachau train and thinks to herself, “He can’t be inside one of those boxcars, she thought. He’s too smart and too beautiful to be carted away like an animal. His father is a lawyer, his mother an aristocrat.” This where the story takes ”the brakes off” and rumbles through 387 pages of breathtaking drama!

For a fledgling author without any creative writing background, I thought her characterization was superlative. I had plenty of empathy for vater (father), oma (grandma), opa (grandpa), and even the reluctant Nazi, Lagerkommandant Grunstein of the Dachau Camp. The sprinkling of German words, titles, and names was expertly done, such as: scheissekopf  (shithead), gruppenfuhrer (group leader), sonderkommandos (work units of Nazi death camp prisoners), and blockfuhrer (a block leader in the death camps). At one point in this marvelous novel, Christine wonders why prisoners would be shot at a death camp: “Why would they shoot those men when they have an efficient method of extermination right here?” The flavor of the novel is exactly how Wiseman states it is on her website: “I love reading and writing about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Fiction offers us a rare chance to slip into the lives of others, and to ask ourselves how we would react under challenging conditions, be it during WWII, the witch craze in Europe, or the Great Depression.” This is a love story, historical fiction, and a sad drama all rolled into one tumultous story. I highly recommend this first time novel by Ellen Marie Wiseman. I guarantee her second novel will not be rejected 72 times! 

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Whether you read this novel, William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or Diary of Anne Frank, the reader finds it hard to believe that Hitler could have been so cruel to a group of people who considered themselves loyal Germans and who were the leading contributors to the country’s economy. Hitler was truly mad. Historicalnovels.info states: “Adolf Hitler rose to power in the aftermath of World War I as Germany struggled under the economic burden of reparations imposed on them by the Versailles Treaty. A dynamic speaker, Hitler scapegoated various groups including German political leaders, liberals, capitalists and Jews for Germany's troubles. By 1933, his popularity resulted in his appointment as Chancellor, a position he used to undermine the existing government and become dictator.”

Hitler published Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in 1925, giving the world the first taste of his building hatred towards the Jews. Wikipedia states; “Mein Kampf has also been studied as a work on political theory. For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world's twin evils: Communism and Judaism. The new territory that Germany needed to obtain would properly nurture the "historic destiny" of the German people; this goal, which Hitler referred to as Lebensraum (living space), explains why Hitler aggressively expanded Germany eastward, specifically the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, before he launched his attack against Russia. In Mein Kampf Hitler openly states that the future of Germany "has to lie in the acquisition of land in the East at the expense of Russia.” Unfortunately, the German working-class had to pay for Hitler’s hostilities by being bombed into oblivion by the U.S. and the British R.A.F.