Monique Roy writes an rousing story about a Jewish family leaving Germany during the start of WWII with the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) hot on their tails. The author must have paid attention at SMU because her prose is excellent. On the other side of the coin, the story is a little calculable at times, especially in regards to the family’s close call escapes. By this I mean the author seems to be overprotective of her characters. She says that this novel was inspired by her grandparents flight out of Germany, so I’m assuming that the family in the novel is fictitious. By the way, God bless her grandparents for their harrowing experience circumventing the Nazis. In my opinion, when writing a story of this ilk, the author has to have a little of George R.R. Martin in her. In another words, have a little unpredictability about the safety of her main characters. It makes a normal novel into a suspenseful page-turner. Okay, enough said about that, because I don’t want to start adding spoiler alerts. I’ve done several reviews recently involving Nazi Germany, including Ellen Marie Wiseman’s The Plum Tree and Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, and I would say that Monique Roy’s novel is on a slightly lesser plateau, although very entertaining and well written.
At a performance of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1932, twins Eva and Inge spot a beautiful woman wearing a dazzling diamond and emerald necklace. They also see a small man with a attractive lady on his arm that terrifies the twins. He is Adolf Hitler. Thus begins the story of Oskar (father), Helene (mother), the twins, and their brother Max, a law abiding Jewish family living and working in the upscale diamond district. I think that the diamond and emerald necklace plays an interesting part in this novel. Well done, Monique Roy. Anyway, in 1933 the mood in Germany changes drastically. Hitler has new laws passed that make Jews second class citizens. The twins school friend, Trudy, is suddenly distant and joins the Nazi Youth Party. Jews are no longer allowed to own a business, they can’t have sex with a non-Jew, and finally they are no longer citizens. Then on 11/9/1938 Kristallnacht happens (the "Night of Broken Glass"). Over a thousand Synagogues are burned down, and 30,000 Jewish men and boys are sent to concentration camps. The Nazis relieve Oskar of the diamond and emerald necklace that he just repurchased from the lady at the concert in Berlin.
Oskar’s family decides to leave Germany with their diamonds sewn into their clothes. With the help of Max’s friends and a lot of luck, they make it to Antwerp, Belgium. They settle in the Jewish part of town in the heart of the diamond district. Oskar and his family start a business with all the diamonds they smuggled out of Germany. Life is okay for awhile, Inge marries Isaac and Eva and Carmen get married. “MAZEL TOV” to the couples. Then the unthinkable happens - Germany attacks Belgium. Here we go again. Now the family tries to find peace in Rio de Janeiro. You will have to read the book to find out what happens there. I’m guessing probably not good. After two years, more trouble arrives! Okay off to Cape Town, South Africa. Will they finally find tranquility, or more distress and/or harassment? Now, I left out a lot of previous trouble they got into to get to this point of the story. By the way, what happened to Eva and Inge’s Nazi classmate,Trudy? There is a lot going on in this story that moves from Germany to Belgium to Brazil to South Africa. Here is what I wanted to know: How is this honorable Jewish family going to react when in 1948 the Reunited National Party of South Africa declares Apartheid as a policy of rigid segregation? How did Oskar’s family feel about their neighboring Aryan German citizens when they didn’t do anything to stop the Nazis from attacking them? Will they stand aside like their German counterparts and watch the blacks get trampled, or will they stand up for the blacks. The answer is very engaging. I highly recommend this novel by Monique Roy.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: My question of how Oskar and his family will react to ‘Apartheid’ is a good one. In other words...How do you feel with the shoe on the other foot (I love idioms)? Oskar didn’t like it when his neighbors did nothing to help him, but will he risk his safety and go against South Africa’s stern policy of segregation to help the blacks? Believe it or not, there is a good book about this subject called, My Race: A Jewish Girl Growing Up Under Apartheid in South Africa by Lorraine Lotzof Abramson. Goodreads.com says: “My Race is the memoir of a gifted Jewish athlete growing up under the apartheid system of South Africa.
As both an outsider excluded from the conservative Christian mainstream and an insider who reaped many of the benefits of a society founded on white supremacy, South African track star Lorraine Lotzof Abramson had a unique vantage point on the apartheid experience.
Her grandparents left Eastern Europe to escape oppression, only to find themselves in another oppressive society. This time, by virtue of their white skin, they were on the same side of the fence as the oppressors. Lorraine's first-hand account shares her ambitions, her achievements, her losses, her family ties -- and her growing unease with the system of social inequality that simultaneously excluded her and celebrated her.
She eventually closes the door on the South African chapter of her life by immigrating to the United States, while her family remained in South Africa. Along the way, Lorraine learns that the real race -- the marathon that is a long and eventful human life -- is a journey towards compassion.”
A provocative book written by Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered is one of the best written about the subject. Goodreads.com says: “Instead of God I believe in ghosts," writes the literary scholar Ruth Kluger in this harrowing memoir of life under the yellow star, a controversial bestseller in Germany.
Born in Vienna, Kluger somehow survived a girlhood spent in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Gross-Rosen. Some of the lessons she imparts are surprising, as when she argues, against other historians, that the female camp guards were far more humane than their male counterparts, and when she admits that she has difficulty today queuing in line, a constant of camp life, "out of revulsion for the bovine activity of simply standing." Her memories of her youth are punctuated by sharp reflections on the meaning of the Shoah, and how it should best be memorialized in a time when ever fewer survivors are left to act as witnesses. Those reflections are often angry -- "Absolutely nothing good came out of the concentration camps," she writes, recalling an argument with a naive German graduate student, "and he expects catharsis, purgation, the sort of thing you go to the theatre for?" But they are constantly provocative, too. Though readers will doubtless take issue with some of her conclusions, Kluger's insistent memoir merits a wide audience.”
This is what Kristallnacht looked like in the Jewish section of Berlin on 11/9/1938:
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