Tag Archives: World War II

At the Water’s Edge, by Sara Gruen *****

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bythewatersedgeBy the author of Water for Elephants comes a gripping tale of cowardice,deception, love, and heroism. My great thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the DRC. It was a quick read and a great deal of fun.

The setting: World War II, primarily on a remote Scottish island. The story: three spoiled, wealthy, entitled brats misbehave publicly and are sent away by their chagrined parents. Since their allowance has been cut and they have to get gone anyway, they decide it might be just the thing to track down the Loch Ness Monster; not only will it be heaps of fun, but Father will be so pleased. He always wanted proof it existed! And what war? When one is wealthy enough, one cannot possibly be in danger! Just haul out the cash and start bribing others. Nothing to it, really!

Now we’re cooking. We’re on a remote Scottish island after endless seasickness aboard a ship that is constantly fired upon by u-boats. We have a crumbling castle; a Scottish warrior; a fainting damsel; a fiendish conspiracy; several working class heroes of both genders; a love story; and of course, there’s the loch! Get your gum boots ready; it’s soggy out there. Toss in a dash of magical realism, and we’re all set.

Gruen does a wonderful job developing Maddie Hyde, our protagonist, who receives more than one wake-up call whilst she is marooned on this island in the middle of a war that is now real and present. The treatment of husband Ellis and pal Hank is perfect; the writer is subtle, but not so subtle that we miss what’s happening. Angus is such a magnificent character that I found myself wondering what actor ought to play him when the movie comes out.

So I absolutely forbid you to regard this book as Water for Sea Monsters! No, no, no.

Gruen’s wonderful nugget will be released at the end of March 2015, just in time for spring break. If you’re going to be somewhere warm, it’s the perfect beach read. If you’ll be at home or in a cozy cabin watching the rain pound down, it’s the perfect curl-up-by-the-fire book.

Your reviewer isn’t usually fond of love stories, but for Sara Gruen, an exception will always be made. A must-read!

Ice Brothers, by Sloan Wilson ***-****

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icebrothersSloan Wilson was a veteran of the second world war, and he served in the Greenland Patrol. Here he uses his knowledge of the place to create an entirely unique setting. In fact, Greenland itself is very nearly a character in Ice Brothers. Thank you to Net Galley and Open Road Media for the ARC.

At the start, I was torn. Although I enjoy both historical fiction and military history a great deal, I deliberately avoid World War II stories that take place in the Pacific theater. My reason is that I don’t like to see Japanese people referred to with racist slurs, even though I know that at the time it was commonplace among many Caucasian members of Allied nations. The”J” word is every bit as offensive to me as the “N” word is. I understand that there was a time when Euro-Americans freely bandied both terms about. However, most editors have the sense to remove it and substitute a less heinous term these days, unless the use of the term serves an important purpose in the story. (For example, check the use of anti-Semitic language by the villainous skipper, Lowery, against whom we develop the bright and personal Nathan Green, who hears his name misused one time too many and vows to change it back to “Greenburg” once he is back in the US.)

So I wanted to read this book, about which little description was available, for two reasons: one was the setting, which will serve as the hook for a lot of readers. What did I know about Greenland? I didn’t even know it was Danish territory! A trip down my upstairs hallway to the large world map hanging on the wall there confirmed the story’s assertion: sure enough, right there underneath the word “Greenland”, writ large albeit in parenthesis, it says “Denmark”. How typically North American of me to have assumed it was Canadian! I surely needed to learn more, and good historical fiction is the most enjoyable way to learn many things.

The second reason for my interest was that it was described as a story in which the protagonist hunts for a Nazi ship. GOOD. So, Japan is unlikely to surface, and I can comfortably read without the story exploding in my face.

So when I hit the “J” word, which was not at all important to the story, but thrown in perhaps as set dressing or to set the tone of the story, I was shocked. The further extraneous reference by a character in the story who asserted that “…those little yellow bastards can’t fight” made it worse. (Of course, there was no reference to the internment of Americans of Japanese descent; extraneous material here is limited to that which is ugly and prejudicial.) I told myself I would take a break and read it a little bit later.

Every time I remembered my obligation to Open Road and Net Galley, I picked up my e-reader, but I had other galleys and other obligations, and each time I thought I would give Sloan’s work another try, I found myself reading a different ARC instead. This persisted for over a month; I can usually finish and review a book faster than that, unless asked to hold my review for publication.

Finally, I had to make a choice. I went back and reread the introduction. I steeled myself and forged onward. It’s a good thing that the plot, setting, and character development were so well done, because that word was used about ten times, and it never contributed a single thing to the story itself.

All right; let’s look at the story, then.

I know very little about watercraft, and was delighted with the accessible, instructive manner Sloan used to clarify the various types of ships and boats and the nautical terms that are most commonly used. I was also surprised and bemused by the stratification of resources apportioned to the Coast Guard as opposed to the Navy, with the Coast Guard serving as the poor cousin that receives whatever the Navy doesn’t need. The ingenious ways in which our fictional Coast Guard officers and crew work around the lack of resources, often not at all legally, must have had at least some basis in fact. I found it really interesting, and it drew me closer to the story as I sympathized with the men on the trawler (The Arluk).

Sloan’s approachable way of describing Greenland’s weather and geography were also really useful.

Greenland is a dangerous place to sail. Today it is different than it was during that time period. I did a web crawl and was horrified to see how much of it has melted now. Back then, at least, it was possible for a sturdy ship to weave its way into a fjord (which is like a peninsula made of water that pokes into the ice mountains), and then have everything freeze, and the ice might crush the ship and its crew against the mountains. The ever-present tension of a possible encounter with Nazis created a sense of suspense that made the book hard to put down after a certain point was reached, even with the racist terminology, which continued to grate and became worse when Paul and Nathan discussed the loyalties of the “Eskies” or “Eskimos” with the Danish inhabitants. The Inuit people were treated as cartoon characters, and the static, repeated description of their faces as round and copper-colored and their mentality as “child-like” made me wonder where this capable writer’s otherwise outstanding skill with varied language had gone. Yet the story still tugged at my interest, and so I made a note in my e-reader and forged on.

Another facet of the story that kept me reading late into the night was the ambiguity of the Danish residents of Greenland, and in particular, the character of Brit. Were these folks really held by force by the Nazis that we could not even see, or were they complicit? Whose side were they on? Would Brit betray Paul to them? When he acceded to her request to see the ship, and she curiously nosed into every odd corner, asking technical questions about the engine and radar, I wanted to pick her up bodily and toss her off the ship!

Sloan was a strong writer for a very different time. His work could still be really compelling, but I doubt I am the only reader who will take exception to the racial slurs that do nothing to drive the plot or develop the characters. I hope either his heirs or his editors will go in and update this work. It can only improve the story to do so.

Recommended, with the qualifications mentioned.

Goebbels, by Peter Longerich ****

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goebbelsLongerich has established himself as a scholar who specializes in writing about the Nazi thugs who surrounded and supported Hitler’s regime in the 1930’s and 40’s. Thank you to Net Galley and Random House for the ARC.

The fact is, despite my strong preference for meaty, well-documented, detailed historical works including biographies, I really struggled with this one. At first I thought it was my own fault for asking for 992 pages (about a third of which is documentation) about such a rotten guy, but that isn’t the reason I kept setting it aside. I devoured John Dean’s recent tome on Nixon, who while not actually a fascist was a really dirty guy, and that was really interesting reading. This colossal volume on Goebbels, on the other hand, is dry, dry, dry.

Longerich’s thesis, if such a large work can be boiled down to its essence, is that while Goebbels was a villain and a sociopath, he wasn’t nearly as important a player in Hitler’s regime as he considered himself to be. He was emotionally dependent on Hitler and the reverse was also true, but his scope and authority were not as great as many people may believe. Longerich makes his case thoroughly and carefully, using Goebbels’s own journal entries and other primary documents, often citing works in the German language to back his assertions. And maybe that is where part of my ambivalence lies, because what he sets out to prove, isn’t what I wanted to know. I wanted to know—just as we always do when something really calamitous occurs or a really monstrous person draws the public eye—what the hell happened to make someone participate in, and even initiate, the things that Goebbels did. I don’t care about his love life, and would just as soon see a good portion of the first 200 pages edited, since the interesting part of his story is later in his life, once the fascists assume power. However, Longerich has written about at least one other top Nazi, and he followed the same basic format, relying on the man’s early life to demonstrate the formation of his character, and he’s had success and acclaim by doing so, and perhaps that isn’t entirely the reason I found this work to be so unexpectedly dull.

For those who are pursuing research projects that involve Nazi top officers, Goebbels is bound to be a valuable resource. For general audiences it might have been more interesting to see him from multiple perspectives. We see Goebbels through his own eyes, and we see what Longerich has discovered to be fact in terms of the authority he was given and the positions he held. I wonder, what about what others who worked with him thought about him? What about how the German public perceived him? I think it might have livened up the text to include more vantage points.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this is the most thorough biography of Goebbels that is widely available and written in English. For scholars seeking information for purposes of research, I highly recommend it. For the audience that seeks an accessible and interesting history and biography that relates to the Holocaust and Nazi officers, I recommend Six Million Accusers: Catching Adolph Eichmann, by D. Lawrence-Young.

In short, Goebbels is more appropriate for a niche audience than as a general read.

And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance, by Jacques Lusseyran *****

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  and there was light Lusseyran was sighted at birth, but a childhood accident caused him to lose his vision. Neither Lusseyran nor his parents–comfortable members of the petit bourgeoisie–let his blindness define him in the way that most people living in the more developed nations of the early 20th century would have done. Instead, they promoted his mental and physical development and sacrificed some of their own comfort to be sure their son continued to receive an education, although the law didn’t guarantee him one. In return, he gave not only his parents but the world a hero, one who became a leader of the French Resistance.

I have heard it suggested that those who lose one sense make up for it with the others, and so those whose eyes no longer see, or see nothing except shadow and light, hear, smell, touch and taste more acutely. Lusseyran claims that even as a child, he navigated his home town largely by smell; the baker was this way, and the creamery that way. And so the foundation was laid.

Though his education was challenged by instructors who were reluctant to have a blind student present, and who sometimes threw up nearly impossible requirements, such as reluctance to permit him the use of the braille typewriter his parents bought for him, yet others inspired him and moved him forward. Teachers, many of us at least, aspire to be someone like Jacques’s history teacher. He describes this man’s fire, and the bond that his passion for his subject and his vocation created:

“He wanted us to be exactly as we really were, funny if we couldn’t help it, furious if we were angry…his learning made us gasp. He made numbers and facts pour down on us like hail…the syllabus for history stopped at 1918…but for him this was no obstacle, for he would go ahead without any syllabus. He went past all the barriers…”

The teacher would continue to teach at the end of the school day, excusing anyone who wanted to leave (and here I think of the yellow school buses that constrict the schedules of US public school students so often now). He says that everyone stayed. “Naturally.”

The dynamic time in which he lived no doubt was responsible for much of their enthusiasm; history was clearly being created with each breath they took. Their history teacher told them–relying upon texts he had read in the original Russian–of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the Stalinism that had taken hold thereafter, of the purges. He spoke of the United States, Roosevelt, of initiative and imagination triumphant.

And so Lusseyran was not yet past adolescence when he felt he had a duty to change the world, to participate in driving out the Nazi occupiers. He tells us that it was understood for some time among himself and the friends he trusted to keep their dangerous knowledge confidential, that he would be the leader of their youth Resistance movement. Others would listen and observe to see what other individuals might join them, but of course, there were spies and each person they trusted could instead lead them to their own deaths. It was very dangerous.

And in such a circumstance, blindness became an unusual asset. New potential recruits would be led to their interview, but instead of an office or home, they were led through a labyrinth of boxes and crates in a completely unlit warehouse. Their interviewer waited at the end of this maze, and he interviewed them in the dark. He could detect falseness of character or fear of exposure from those who would betray the Resistance by listening to the nuances of their voices, and those individuals who weren’t deemed worthy were left to find their own way back out. Of course, the location sometimes had to change, but the setup was the same.

Lusseyran’s heroism is a testament to initiative and idealism. The reader will have to learn the rest of his story the way I did; the narrative is as skilled and engaging as the political work that preceded it. It is one of the most unusual and inspirational autobiographies I have encountered.

Highly recommended.

Alex’s Wake: A Voyage of Betrayal and a Journey of Remembrance, by Martin Goldsmith *****

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alexs wakeHolocaust memoirs take on added urgency right now, between the revisionists who want to rewrite history and claim that the entire thing was either a hoax or dreadful exaggeration, and the fact that the eye witnesses and survivors are nearly all dead now. Martin Goldsmith retraces the journey, both academically and where possible, literally, to the places his Uncle Helmut and grandfather Alex were taken. It’s quite a story, and would be a fun read if it were not so horribly, terribly true. As it stands, Goldsmith’s narrative pulls his readers in one slim finger at a time, until we are held firmly to the text and must remain until it’s done.

The narrative starts out introspective and almost dreamlike. If I were not reading this free courtesy of Net Galley in exchange for my review, I think I might have set it aside about twenty percent of the way in and not returned, thinking to myself that of course, I know the Holocaust was real, but do I want to read about it again? It’s not an enjoyable topic, and what good can it do to revisit it? Furthermore, I started to believe that this particular narrative was not so different from other heartbreaking stories, and might be more of interest to the writer and his surviving kin than to strangers like me.

I am glad I kept reading, because just past this point is where we quit the runway and the story takes wing. The writer starts with the visits, first to the Holocaust museum, and then to Europe. He is greeted warmly in his family’s former homeland, and he makes speeches and accepts certificates and expresses appreciation to the family who now occupies what was once the family manse for their clumsy token gesture. The current owners clearly understand that circumstances have skewed things badly, and they want to make it up in some impossible way. They were wondering what he would think of a nice plaque on the building’s exterior noting its place in history and recognizing his family.

He understands these folks aren’t the ones who stole from him. He says and does the right things, but the edge is unmistakably there, as part of him longs to say that if they really want to make things right, to give him back his family’s home. Like many who lost wealth and/or family in the Holocaust, he waxes nostalgic, looking with poignancy at the beautiful place that should rightfully be his.

Here I squirm a bit. I don’t read rich people’s stories for a reason. I don’t believe anybody is entitled to vast wealth. It’s why the only memoirs I avoid are those of the ruling rich.

But another more important principle trumps my usual one: nobody, nobody, nobody should be disenfranchised of even a penny on account of their ethnicity or race. If anyone at all in Germany gets to have a big fancy house, then Goldsmith’s family should. His resentment is righteous; he has the moral high ground here. I think back to an old bumper sticker I once saw, courtesy of the American Indian Movement during the 1960’s that read, “AMERICA: love it or give it back.” And thus is the untenable yet irreparable theft of the Holocaust’s descendents. We can’t fix it, so here’s your framed letter, your trophy, your plaque, your award. His ambivalence runs deep and is clear and harsh. It should be.

From there, Goldsmith’s family saga telescopes out in a way that is so deft, I don’t even catch the transitions. This is rare. I spent years of my life teaching teenagers how to make transitions in their writing, and usually when it is well done in professional writing, I sit back and admire it, like the French paintings he describes. I love to watch good transitions happen, but the very best are noteworthy in that I am so deeply into the text that they float by unseen. It’s almost magical. And so, as the family’s tale is told, we see the larger picture of France and French fascism.

Many of us today want to believe that all of France and much of Germany was simply too afraid of the fascists to resist, but Goldsmith unflinchingly grabs us by the hair, makes us look. There are cheering throngs that are thrilled when the fascists take power. They aren’t trembling; they are overjoyed. This is how fascism works, in demonizing a sector of the population, others believe themselves lifted up.

In the end, I was glad to have joined Goldsmith on his journey. For anyone with a serious interest in World War II; the Holocaust; the face and effect of fascism; or contemporary European history, this gem is not to be missed.

I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary, by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak *****

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IkissyourhandsPoignant and painful; beautiful and wrenching…Szegedy-Maszak takes us through a time and place in a way nobody else could. If you are a serious historian, please consider this a must-read.

When I applied to receive this story as a Goodreads giveaway, I did so as an historian, conscious of a blind spot in my own education. I knew too little of Hungary and its past, apart from that it had become a part of the Soviet block at some point, and then became independent once more. I wanted to learn more about the country’s political and economic history, and if I had to read a love story to do that, then I would.

When the book arrived, I gasped as I pulled it from its envelope. Beautifully bound in hardcover with folio-cut pages and a pearlescent cover featuring the family about which she writes, I held it in my hands, showed it to my family, and then swore my head would not be turned by the beauty on the cover, and the painstakingly aesthetic manner in which the interior is designed. The family tree at the start of the book actually turns out to be essential, because many people are mentioned many times here, and to keep them straight, I would have to keep flipping back. But I didn’t know that yet. I saw the literary (and as it turns out, highly appropriate) quotes that adorn each chapter’s beginning, along with images from the past, snapshots of what is no more.

So…incredibly good taste, and no expense has been spared. But can she write? Oh yes! And by the time I was done, I had no fewer than fifty sticky-noted pages, and worse, every single one of them marks a passage that seems really important. Now I must pick and choose, which is a dreadful predicament.

Be aware that this is a hyper-literate read, not necessarily accessible to every reader. And to get to the good part, you’ll have to do a lot of work at first, plodding through the dull stuff at the start and trying to remember who everyone is.

Though it tells a good deal of what took place behind the scenes before, during, and after the second world war in Hungary (albeit from the very conservative perspective of considerable material interest and self-involvement), it is also a deeply personal story, told well by an already accomplished writer with a literary pedigree a mile long and granite solid. This is her first book, but Szegedy-Maszak is already a respected writer and journalist. Her love of family and the details that governed their lives in Hungary, Europe, and the USA are what makes this memoir compelling. For many, this will be a more palatable way to learn history as well.

Because of the role of extended family, which is inextricably intertwined with that of her parents, the reader must wade through lengthy genealogy in the beginning. I have read other reviews saying that the reviewer gave up on the book because of the initial level of detail, and indeed, at first it is tempting to wonder why anyone who is not related to the author would have an interest. Though the author has doubtless already hacked away at the introductory chapters and removed portions that it hurt her heart to pull and cut, a little more pruning at the start would make this book more readable. It’s a 4.5 on my very picky scale anyway, though, because what comes after its somewhat tedious beginning is remarkable and well told. It is a very scholarly yet heart-felt telling of how world events have impacted her family, and vice versa, and it is when she describes poignant experiences in a painterly, often painful way that her family’s story becomes most absorbing.

The writer grows up in a multigenerational household in which children are almost irrelevant, seated below the salt at the long formal dinner table. Everything the elders value and discuss has come and gone. Her mother descends from the Weiss and Kornfeld (later to become “de Kornfeld”) families, and her mother’s grandfather was once the most wealthy industrial and agricultural baron in all of Hungary. Now most of the empire is gone, and the family sighs wistfully and speaks about the past, when they were someone, when a mere phone call or visit from Weiss or Kornfeld could cause a policy change, or change someone’s life.

*consider everything after this to be a spoiler alert*

Her parents had been very different people. Her mother had grown up in a vacuum of sorts created by immense wealth and privilege. Even as the Nazis stormed across Europe, Hungary was, by the author’s telling, insulated for a long time, unlike their unlucky neighbors, the Poles. Hungary wanted the land that had been lost to Czechoslovakia in the Treaty of Trianon following the First World War, an immense piece of real estate inhabited primarily by Hungarians, and which had been taken from them. When Nazi tanks rolled into Austria and boundaries were redrawn, the Hungarians held their breath. They understood that with the USSR fighting as an Allied nation, they would see no restitution of land from the Allies. Thus, they became an Axis power, at first tentatively, with the hope that if enough munitions were produced by the Manfred Weiss Works, makers of tanks, munitions, and later in the war, airplanes, the Germans would see no need to invade and supervise Hungary. And this was the Hungarian argument against occupation: we can do so much for you independently, oh Germany. Don’t trouble yourselves coming here. It’s all good.

In the midst of all this, Hanna Kornfeld, the writer’s mother, meets a brooding intellectual and politician, Aladar Szegedy-Maszak. When he signs his letters to her—first formal, then impassioned, but with the restraint decorum required—he concludes with “I kiss your hand”, which is merely the equivalent of the Western “yours truly” (when we aren’t) or “sincerely” (even less so). It was a format, until it was more.

He is an intellectual, a scholar, and a very busy man. He is anti-fascist, and trying to somehow involve the Allied forces, so that Hungary can make its separate peace with Britain and the US, but Britain holds off, regarding Hungary as not of primary importance strategically (and in fact, they are surrounded by fascists, so it would be a stretch by the time Hungary makes its entreaty), and also, Hungary is regarded as opportunist.

Here the author bristles, and I think she doth protest too much.

My sense is that the time to contact the Allies was when Hitler invaded Poland. One doesn’t offer Hitler endless munitions, and then complain to the Allies when he sends his troops in to do exactly what they’ve done everywhere else in Europe.

Aladar, however, is not offering endless munitions; he is trying to persuade anyone who will listen to him that the fascists must be resisted at all costs. He is arrested for his anti-fascist activities and sent to Dachau. He survives , partly because he is treated as a political prisoner, which for some reason is considered a relatively (RELATIVELY!) privileged category, and also because the fascists don’t cast their eye toward Hungary until near the end of the war.

And when they come, they do it in the way only fascists can. The Danube runs red with blood. This is not allegory, but a literal reference. Despite every record that was burned, every photograph that was destroyed, there is still plenty of documentation, and the author provides it all, the child of the scholar become scholar herself. The bibliography at the book’s end, along with the notes for each chapter, is impressive.

Once Aladar is free, his experience leaves him brooding, nearly broken, and overcome with survivor’s guilt. It is with trepidation, then, that he contacts Hanna once more when the war has ended, because as he tells her, he is not the same man he was before the war; he has no money and no job; yet the one thing he knows is that he loves her and wants to marry her if she is still interested. He kisses her hands many, many times.

Interestingly, Hanna is fine. Her family has swung a deal. They will sign over all of the factories, the real estate, in fact the large majority of the family fortune, in exchange for their lives somewhere outside the Nazi realm. Let us go to a neutral country, and you can have it all.

The fascists want to hold a few of the family back as hostages. It is here that the writer’s aunt blanches and almost does not sign. Yet the family understands that there is really nothing to keep the Nazis from taking everything and having every last one of them killed. With the coolness that generally characterizes the ruling class, the family cuts its losses and runs. Who can blame them? Others would surely have done the same, given the chance. They go to Portugal initially; later some will try to rebuild a life in Budapest, others in Switzerland.

But it is Aladar whose political practices and courage open the door to the United States. It is remembered after the war that he has pleaded all along, from the very beginning, for Hungary to become a part of the Allied umbrella. He had met Hitler, and he had heard him speak. He knew the guy wasn’t someone you wanted to rule your people. He did everything he could to take Hungary into Allied hands, but it didn’t happen. He nearly died in the undertaking, and now, the US gazes at him with a bit more focus. He is a friendly face in war-torn Europe, and might make an excellent liaison with the new Hungarian government

When the war is over, is appointed minister to Hungary for the USA. With a moue of distaste at the notion of leaving Europe, and understandable grief at leaving her family at such a wrenching time, Hanna agrees to marry Alastar and move to the USA. Numerous family members will later follow.

But small countries all lose when enormously powerful countries sit down, victorious, to divide the post-war map, as if it were a smallish birthday cake where everyone at the table ought to get a little piece. Hungarians will not determine the fate of Hungarians. The USSR has paid dearly in human flesh and material loss, and now it will build itself a buffer zone to protect its turf against future incursion.

The Allied nations understand the nature of Stalinism (and this is my own historical interpretation; the writer embraces the Cold War era view of “totalitarianism” with regard to the now-moribund USSR). It is ultimately conservative; the USSR was not interested in expanding across the globe, only in holding onto its own power base. Just as France gained back land it had lost, and just as the US experienced unprecedented power and influence over the globe, so would Mother Russia see to it that her own needs were met. Hungary was diced up even finer, since a fair amount of anti-Stalinist sentiment prevailed there. When they were finished, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and other satellite states stood like sentries on the Soviet perimeter.

As for the heroic Aladar, he refuses to recognize the new Hungarian government. He welcomes the wife of the deposed head of state, one who was friendly toward a capitalist system. The Smallholder Party that Aladar favored has gone down, but he is not out of the fight yet. Soon, the newspapers in the Stalinist orbit will display a photograph of the Hungarian minister kissing the hand of this woman as she leaves the US, and he is branded a traitor.

His courage gets him nothing in the US except the opportunity to remain with his family as a US citizen (small potatoes for the writer’s family, yet something that is held dearly and hard to get these days!)
I was chagrined to see that he went to work for the right-wing (my characterization, not the author’s) Radio Free Europe. He had the integrity to resign when he learned this enterprise was CIA-run, but the Voice of America cannot be regarded by a Marxist (of the non-Stalinist variety) such as myself.

The writer is at her strongest when she injects the deeply personal moments into her narrative: a family member explains to her that when she views the photographs of bodies piled high at the death camps, she searches the faces of the corpses to “see if one knows anyone.” Suddenly the Holocaust becomes up close and personal in a way only trumped by Schindler’s List and Night. Family members have died there; this was not as clean an exit for her family as it is made out to be in the press.

Though despondent over the loss of his country’s autonomy; his own survivor’s guilt, including his inability to save the members of his family in Hungary who were killed or hurt by the Stalinists in retaliation against his activities abroad; and finally, the death of his and Hanna’s first-born and namesake, Alastar still travels to Hungary with the writer, his daughter, in the late 70’s, and he is still sharp enough mentally to shush her when she naively inquires about the number of police all over the airport. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak points out that he must have been clinically depressed, but not enough medical advances had been made for him to have anything to help him beyond Valium, a drug that’s great for anxiety, but doesn’t really do much for depression.

Though the writer seems perhaps most deeply attached to the female members of her family, I find myself more taken with her father, who despite his political leanings that are almost opposite to my own, was clearly a man of principle and integrity, and who knew how to roll up his sleeves and do what needed doing. In retirement, he finds that he needs to see things grow; he loses himself in the family garden, and visitors mistake him for the gardener.

There is so much more to see here, and this is clearly a work wrought from love of family and origin rather than something done primarily for fiscal gain. For those interested in the Holocaust; Hungarian history; or for women like Szegedy-Maszak (and me) who find that we understand our mothers so much better only after they grow old and die, this book should not be missed. The first few chapters are slow, but forge on, and you will be rewarded.

Six Million Accusers: Catching Adolph Eichmann, by D. Lawrence-Young *****

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sixmillionaccusersPlease lower the safety bar in front of you, and make certain your belt is securely fastened. We will be traveling at an astonishing rate of speed; keep your hands firmly on your book or digital reader. As you finish Six Million Accusers: Catching Adolph Eichmann, you may be disoriented and need to remind yourself where you are and what day it is. It’s that gripping.

My deep gratitude goes to Mr. Lawrence-Young, his publishers, and NetGalley for letting me read and review this amazing novel.

David Lawrence-Young packs a powerful story into a well plotted, brilliantly paced narrative in order to tell the story of the capture of Adolph Eichmann, one of the nastiest and most powerful Nazis responsible for the deaths of six million Jews in eight nations, not to mention millions more who were Gypsies, political opponents, disabled, gay, or who were mistaken for somebody else. And of course, these numbers don’t include those who died in the battlefields, seas and skies of the European theater of World War II. Only Hitler and Himmler were above Eichmann in the fascist pecking order.

Because story is such a potent vehicle for the truth, the author has chosen historical fiction over a more expository nonfiction format. I think he chose well. He has a long list of previously published books that precede this one, from Shakespeare to an English textbook to other works of historical fiction, but he says this one was the most difficult, and I believe it. As is true of the finest writers of this genre, he has a bibliography at tne end of his work to let us know that the story is absolutely true; he has filled in the cracks by inventing the dialogue instead of paraphrasing as he would have to do with a work of nonfiction, but this is the real deal nevertheless. This is what happened.

Once this was made plain (I always read the introduction, and I also read the author page before I begin), I dug myself into my favorite reading corner and prepared to concentrate, convinced that while compelling, the historical journey would require full focus and strong literacy skills. I was surprised to find that he wrote in a manner that will be accessible to just about anyone who wants to read it, and the need to focus is moot, because from the get-go, he has our eyes and full attention automatically. The pace builds in a glorious arc, reaching breakneck speed as we close in on Eichmann along with the team of spies and undercover representatives of Israel’s government.

The questions that arose in my mind were answered. Given that these agents slip into Argentina with the assumption that they will need to act outside that nation’s unfriendly rules of law, and are essentially going to kidnap Eichmann, I wondered why the fuss. If they were willing to go that far (not that they shouldn’t), why not just sail in under a black flag and cap him behind the ear? Why all the fuss and bother to smuggle him back to Israel to be tried?

And it became clear. Many other SS officers were dealt with in the manner I had been thinking of, but this man was so utterly symbolic of the Holocaust that the world had to see him tried, and Israel and her people had to lay out the facts, document them irrefutably, and wisely so, because half a century later would come the Holocaust deniers who would want to pretend the whole thing was a hoax, sham, or exaggeration, and the Nuremberg Trials make it much harder for anyone to do so.

A thing that gave me great pleasure was reading about the agents, including our nominally fictitious protagonist, Haim, who DID get out of Germany or other parts of Europe in time to avoid arrest, torture, and maybe death.

I was surprised, and surprised to be surprised, about the news that Israel had had to fight for its independence. As a history teacher, how is it that I did not know this? I think it’s simple. It was too recent to be in the curriculum, but since I had barely been born when it took place, I was too young to remember. And independence from Britain was important. On the surface, it looks as if they bit the hand that fed them; hey, they put up a Jewish homeland to help people escape Hitler, and now you’re going to shoot at them?

But it turns out this was very necessary. Part of Britain’s game plan was to limit how many could come out. They were more generous in their immigration policy than the USA, but that’s not saying much. Israel needed independence in order to have a nation where all Jews could safely exist. (I won’t even go into the Palestinian question which is worth many other books, a huge issue unto itself.)

Like a lot of academics, I have many Jewish friends, and though all are too young to have experienced the horror first hand, they have family stories, even legends. (“My grandmother personally rescued one of the last remaining Torahs from a burning synagogue”, a colleague told me.)

But even if I had not had their friendship, simple justice would have permitted me to sigh with satisfaction, once when Eichmann was in custody, and again when he was convicted.

Don’t just read this book; keep it. Share it with your children. The world must never, ever permit such a thing to happen again. It is by educating the next generation, and they the one after them, that we keep the neo-Nazis firmly on the fringes, which is the best place for them to enjoy the First Amendment rights they would gladly grind beneath their hobnailed boots for the rest of us if permitted to do so.

Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings, by Craig Symonds *****

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Eloquent, thorough, focused, and well documented; Neptune, by Craig L. Symonds, is a definitive work regarding maritime’s most immense project, the invasion of Normandy during World War II.

That said, I urge the reader to get a hard copy of this book, because the e-reader version as I saw it had charts that were useless; in addition maps, so important to a work like this, are simply impossible on a tablet. For a book of this importance that should hold a place of pride on the shelves of any professional or serious personal library, it is worth the investment to procure a hard cover copy.

Symonds’ narrative opens with strategizing and secret diplomacy regarding American aid to Britain, which is in far worse condition during the war against Nazi Germany than I had ever understood. Just as a plan begins to gel, word comes that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Months of careful planning must now be carefully reexamined and new plans made. Should the USA fight on one front, or on two? Should it attack Japan first, or go straight to Europe (as most US advisers were inclined to do), or follow Churchill’s suggestion that the fight begin in Northern Africa? Americans tended toward quick action and massive investment of resources; the British were careful in husbanding materials and preferred to examine every aspect of every possible plan before moving forward. Frankly, I am glad I didn’t have to be there during the debate.

Symonds has put together a narrative different from any other I have read regarding this period, and the only work I have read that deals exclusively with the invasion of Normandy from the naval viewpoint. I have also never seen any writer try so valiantly to balance the perspectives, the strengths and challenges of both Britain and the USA. It was in reading the ways in which cultural attitudes not only created friction but directly impacted military positions that I realized how completely American I am. He further explains how the decisions that were made came about and all of the careful compromises and considerations that went into the events as they unfolded.

Because this is such a momentous work, I found myself marking far too many pages—a weakness when I become overly enthusiastic—and now it would be too much to go back and refer to all of them. The vantage point was enormously enlightening, and I came away feeling as if I had only just begun to grasp the enormity of this horrific conflict.

Highly recommended…in hardcover, not tablet form.