A Storm Unleashed by Carol Matas

Twelve-year-old Marianne (Mia) Kaufmann lives in Berlin with her father, Dr. Adam Kaufman who is a Jewish veterinarian who owns his own clinic.  Mia's mother Johanna died from an infection she contracted shortly after Mia was born. Mia's parents met when her father was attending to the animals on her mother's family's farm. This farm is where Mia's mother's parents -- that is Mia's Oma and Opa still live. Ever since her mother's death, Mia's Auntie Lil, who is her mother's sister, has been coming into the city from Monday to Friday to keep house and make lunch and dinners. She returns to the family farm on the weekends to help Opa with the chores.

The novel opens on May 3, 1935.  Mia is sitting on a park bench in the afternoon observing birds. Beside her is her beloved Max, her German shepherd. Mia has just noted a common redstart when a girl in the unifrom of the League of German Girls approaches her and demands that she give Max to her. Quickly Mia puts her notebook into her backpack and bolts down the street with the girl in pursuit. After slipping through the lobby of a nearby apartment building, Mia makes for the train station and boards the train that will take her to Oma and Opa's farm. She needs to get away from Berlin as fast as possible to save Max. Mia remembers that her father gave her Max because of what happened two years earlier in 1933.

At that time, Hitler had been appointed Chancellor only three months ago, and his Nazi party is now in power in Germany. Mia had not attended school that day, April 1st because of a headache and was allowed to accompany her father to his veterinarian clinic. But as they were going downstairs they met her friend, Sam Landenberg whose parents own a sweet shop. Mia decided to go with Sam to his family's sweet shop and while there they hear the breaking of glass coming from Herr Schwatz's hardware store next door. With Herr Landenberg leading the way, Mia and Sam found Herr Schwartz on the ground, bleeding after having been attacked by men in brown uniforms. The men paint Jewish stars on the sweets shop and stand outside with signs urging customers not to buy from Jewish shops. Sam was angry at Mia whom he accuses of not paying attention to what has been happening in Germany. 

As Mia's friend Sam explained, one of the first things Hitler did upon gaining power was to start a trade war with Germany's neighbours, Denmark and Sweden, placing taxes on good coming from those countries. This had affected the Germany economy but Hitler and the Nazis blamed the Jewish population for the poor economy.  While the other customers in the shop believe this will pass, Sam doesn't think so. Mia tries to go back to her books and her birds but two weeks later, something else happened.

It was her father's birthday. Mia, her Auntie Lil and her friends, Frieda Liebermann and Sam bake a lemon cake for her father but instead of her friends being allowed to stay, Auntie Lil asks them to leave. On that day her father arrives home with a German shepherd puppy whom Mia names Max. Mia began to train Max immediately and soon she and Max were inseperable.

Mia and Max arrive at Oma and Opa's farm which was built in 1790. The farm consists of a large, two-storey farmhouse, "...a large barn, a pig shed, a chicken coop surrounded by fencing to keep out the foxes and  a stable for the horses. There is also a granary and a hay shed." Mia tells Oma and Opa what happened and they immediately phone her home to let Auntie Lil know what has happened. Mia questions Oma as to whether she should have stood up to the Nazi girl, but Oma tells her that the time was during the election but the people chose differently. Opa sends Mia out to tend to the chickens and afterwards she takes Bertha out for a ride and then brushes the horse down. When Mia returns to the farmhouse, her father and Auntie Lil have arrived. Although Mia feels frightened to return to their home in Berlin, her father suggests that she simply avoid the park where she encountered the Nazi girl.

Mia returns to her public school. Things are very different with the Nazis in power: they have passed the Law Against Overcrowding which has resulted in many Jewish students leaving the public schools to attend Jewish only schools. Mia once had the highest marks in the class, was asked to help out by the teachers and had a wide circle of friends, but that isn't the case anymore. Her teacher, Frau Koch is a fanatic Nazi and begins every class by having Mia read aloud. This is followed by her humiliating Mia in front of her classmates while teaching the students Nazi propaganda and lies. She tells the class that although Mia is the classic Aryan beauty with her blond hair, blue eyes and round head, she has Jewish filth polluting her blood. Mia begs Rachel, the only other Jewish student in her class not to tell her father because she doesn't want her father to know either.

After school that day, Sam reveals that his family is fleeing to France and that Herr Schwarz and his family are also leaving as the Nazis have taken over their store. On Saturday with Sam now gone, Mia waits for her father for lunch. However when he doesn't show, Mia decides to visit his clinic. At the clinic, Mia is told by a strange man named Herr Fischer that her father is at the dog-training school and will be there all afternoon. Frau Weber, his receptionist, takes Mia to the school in her uncle's luxury car.

At the dog-training school which trains police dogs, Mia is shocked to see her father give the Nazi salute and call one of the men a name. He has her demonstrate teaching a skill in front of an SS officer. When they are at home later, Mia's father tells her that now she is expected to go to the dog-training school every Saturday to help train the dogs. While Mia is excited at this prospect, she is also upset at her father for not telling her about the school. He admits he doesn't know why the training center is so secret but he does reveal that the only reason he has been allowed to keep his clinic and train the dogs is because of his war service.

The next day Mia attends a training session and she watches as the men train the dogs to "bring down". Back at home, Mian and her father further discuss training dogs but also if people can be trained to act and think a certain way.

At school on Monday morning, Frau Koch continues indoctrinating the students about race using Mia as an example and telling a story which she insists proves that some people are "vermin". When Mia attempts to counter her propaganda, she is made to sit in the hallway the rest of the day. This upsets Mia so much that when she is climbing trees with Frieda she wants to let go and deliberately hurt herself. This shocks Frieda who comforts Mia and encourages her not to think this way. The two girls quickly leave the park with Max and go to Frieda's home to avoid the Nazi girl. There they meet Frieda's mother, Dr. Lieberman who was a gynecologist at the Berlin hospital but who now is only allowed to work privately as a midwife. Frieda's father, once a professor of literature now teaches at one of the Jewish schools. Frieda helps Mia get home safely with Max without encountering the Nazi girl.

The night Mia's father talks to her about what happened that day when she was with Frieda. It is at this point that Mia finally tells her father what is happening at the school. This leads to a family meeting at Opa and Oma's farm and Mia's father, grandparents and her Auntie Lil decide that they will tell the school that Mia has suddenly fallen ill with scarlet fever. Since it is almost the end of the school year, she will be recovering at the family farm. It is decided that after the summer, Mia will begin attending Frieda's Jewish school. Despite the sign saying Jews are not welcome in the farming community, Mia's father will come to visit the farm every Sunday. While on the farm, Mia begins training Max to "bring down". It is a skill that will save her and Frieda a few weeks later.

Mia returns to Berlin in August to start at the Jewish school. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the situation for Jews in Berlin is escalating. Mia's family barely escapes being attacked after Hitler's Storm Troopers target a restaurant and Frieda's father is viciously assaulted. It is Frieda and Mia who come up with a brilliant plan that will save both their families and offer them a chance at a new life. But it will require both sacrifice and separation.

Discussion

A Storm Unleashed is a another well-crafted historical fiction novel written by Canadian author Carol Matas. This thoughtful novel explores the events in prewar Germany as it gradually comes under complete control by the Nazis and their dictator Adolf Hitler. 

Carol Matas explains in her Author's Note how she came to write about Hitler's dog army. "...it was an accidental discovery -- while researching another book about the Holocaust I came across an article on Hitler's army of 200,000 dogs. The largest dog-training school was at Grunheide, just outside of Berlin. They trained 2000 dogs at a time. The school pretended to be a training facility for police dogs so that they would not overtly break the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which had imposed a limit of 100,000 dogs on Germany for military purposes. K-9 army units were trained at Grunheide and scattered throughout police units so as not to arouse suspicion." As Matas points out in her note, these dogs are present in almost all books and movies about the Holocaust. In those movies, the Nazi dogs are always shown as very vicious and invoking deep fear. Matas writes that "...without these dogs, the roundups of Jewish people, the train evacuations, even keeping order in the concentrations camps, would not have been possible..." 

The novel is set in prewar Berlin, in the mid 1930's as Hitler begins to establish his grip on Germany. 1935 was a critical year for Hitler as this was the year Hitler began to rearm Germany. He established the Luftwaffe and reintroduced conscription to bring the German army up to half a million men - both breaking the Treaty of Versailles.  Although she states in her Author's Note that she leaves the discussion of how Hitler was able to come to power in Germany, Matas does use several characters to discuss how Hitler has come to power and why people believe what he is telling them. 

At the beginning of the novel, Mia is focused on her books, training Max and her bird watching. Her friend Sam tells Mia, who he considers as not having kept up on the situation in Germany, that Hitler began targeting allies with tariffs on their goods, and when the economy began to slow, he began blaming the Jewish population. Mia believes that because she hasn't been paying attention, she didn't know what to do when she was confronted by the Nazi girl who wanted to take her dog. This event changes Mia, because it forces her to begin thinking about what is happening in Germany.

Mia questions why people elected Hitler and what they were thinking. Her Oma explains, "They weren't really thinking at all...They were feeling something. They were feeling mad and wanted someone to fix everything."  At school, her fanatical teacher Frau Koch teaches the lie that "the Treaty of Versailles was used against Germany, and that Germany was not responsible for the war." which Mia discovers through her own research is simply not true.

As Hitler's control over Germany deepens and his agenda against the Jewish people becomes more organized, Mia believes they should stay and fight but Sam explains why many Jewish people are leaving. "There is no court to turn to because all the judges who stood for the law rather than for Hitler are gone -- fired or resigned or working for the Nazis now. There's no lawyer to hire because all the lawyers who believed in the real laws, not Hitler's laws, are gone -- fired or resigned or working for the Nazis. There's no newspaper that will uncover this story and tell it to its readers because the only papers that are allowed to publish are those that print Nazi propaganda.  So we stay and do what?"

As Mia considers the training happening at the school, she begins to ask questions about whether dogs can be trained to be bad dogs and this leads her to question if people can be trained to bad. Her father tells her that it might be possible to train someone to treat people badly but that a way to tell if something is wrong is that if you don't want to be treated a certain way do not do that to others. This leads Mia to consider the Nazi girl who wants to steal her dog, Max. "Did she choose to believe in the Nazis and their hatred of Jews? Did she choose to be a bully and take what she wanted? Or has she been trained? By her parents? By her classmates? By the newspapers and all the horrible things they print? By teachers like Frau Koch, who every day drums into our heads how noble Nazis are and how vicious Jews are?" Mia considers that if people are similar to dogs and can be trained to believe something. She notes that every day at school they "...are forced to repeat how great Hitler is, how great the Nazis are -- and how terrible the Jews are. When do people stop repeating this and start believing it?"

Once Mia is out of the public school and being taught at her grandparents by her Auntie Lil she comes to realize just  how much propaganda they are being fed at school instead of what really happened in history. "It is an odd feeling knowing a large portion of the country believes things that are simply not true. I can't help but wonder if I also believe things that aren't true. If so, how would I know?" Auntie Lil explains that "People who are curious and look at all sides of an issue are less likely to turn into lemmings who would follow anyone and do anything. People like the Nazis are swept up in a fever, a fervour, a blind obedience."  Mia sees just how far this fervour goes when she and her family and friends are attacked at a restaurant.

The novel also considers just how far one should go in terms of cooperation with evil, to simply protect oneself and those dear to them. Mia learns that two of her Jewish classmates are terrified of Max because it was a German shepherd dog who helped in the arrest of their father who was eventually murdered. This leads her to confront her father and he reveals that he has learned that Hitler is rebuilding Germany's military, likely in preparation for war. 

Matas includes two interesting scenes in her novel. The first is a series of dreams that Mia has involving her dead mother who advises her to trust her father. These two dreams are both puzzling but comforting to Mia. The other interesting scene is her discussion with a rabbi regarding race and how the Nazis have twisted their view of the human race to exclude certain people like the Jews so they can be murdered.

A Storm Unleashed, the title of which is a reference to Hitler training and unleashing trained and vicious army dogs against the German Jews, is well-written and will appeal to young readers who enjoy animal stories and historical fiction. 

When reading this novel it's hard not to think about the parallels between what happened in post-World War I Germany and what is currently happening south of the border in the United States. It's interesting to see how there is an economy to the breakdown of democratic rule. As did Germany in 1933, the United States has also legitimately elected a leader who has promised to make the country prosperous again using an agenda that has been previously described and promoted. It includes focusing the blame on a specific group (illegal immigrants) for many of the country's complex problems, targeting that group with mass roundups, incarceration and no due process, targeting political opponents, the judiciary who may rule against policies and the media who may speak out against them. It includes threatening to annex weaker countries (Panama, Greenland, and Canada), promoting falsehoods about trade, breaking existing treaty agreements and initiating a punishing tariff war with its most faithful allies.  A Storm Unleashed asks young readers to consider how a people can subscribe to ideologies and policies that in the end can have far-reaching national and global effects. It is a question well worth considering and this short novel offers readers that opportunity.

Book Details:

A Storm Unleashed by Carol Matas

Toronto: Scholastic Canada Ltd.      2025

236 pp.

A Struggle For Hope by Carol Matas

Ruth Mendenberg is safe now - at least from the Nazis. She survived the Holocaust and after leaving the displaced persons camp in Germany, returned to Poland. When she went to her Uncle Moishe's home, she found his maid living there, wearing her mother's dress and pearls. 

A man named Saul asked Ruth to help a group of Jewish children in Poland travel to Palestine. Believing everyone in her family dead, Ruth agreed and so she made the dangerous trip through Europe, without identity papers or permission, to cross into each country. In Italy they were taken aboard a boat and it was on this boat that Ruth found her brother Simon.  

It is May, 1948 and Ben-Gurion has just declared the land they are living on in Palestine to be the new country of Israel. Ruth is living in Kibbutz David along with Simon. When she first arrived at the kibbutz, she, Simon and her boyfriend Ziv joined the Haganah, the underground Jewish defense force.  Ruth is recovering from an injured arm and Zvi from injuries from a land mine.

Their kibbutz is under siege by Arab soldiers and to calm the children, Ruth is asked to tell a story. While she is doing this, one mother, Aviva realizes her five year old daughter, Batya is missing. After a brief search, Batya is found in the garden, shot in the stomach by a sniper. Ruth decides to risk rushing Batya by jeep out of the kibbutz to a hospital. With Zvi driving, Ruth holding Batya and Aviva manning a gun they race long.  Aviva is shot dead by a sniper but they make it to the hospital.  Batya's life is saved and she begins to recover.

When Simon comes to visit Ruth, Zvi and Batya at the hospital, he tells them that Kibbutz David is holding their position but that many kibbutziim are in trouble. Simon has come to determine if Ruth is well enough to go to the Syrian front to help Kibbutz Degania which is under siege. She is sent to Kibbutz Degania, where she and Zvi dig trenches. When they are attacked by Syrian tanks, Ruth and Zvi throw Molotov cocktails and set a tank on fire leading to the Syrians retreating. While their actions help save the kibbutz, both Ruth and Zvi are back in hospital. 

Simon tells them that the two Israeli factions, the Haganah led by David Ben-Gurion and the Irgun led by Menachim Begin are in conflict over an incoming shipment of arms. Even Simon who joined the Irgun and Zvi who belongs to the Haganah can't agree as to what should happen to the arms. During the ceasefire with the Arabs, the ship, the Altalena arrives with more refugees from Europe and the weapons. But suddenly the two Jewish factions fire on one another and Simon is seriously injured. Although his life is saved, the loss of his leg triggers the haunting memories Ruth has kept buried for so long. The memories of a loss so great that she loses all hope for the future.

Discussion

A Struggle For Hope is a thought-provoking short novel for middle grade readers set in 1948 in the newly formed state of Israel. As the title indicates, the main character, seventeen-year-old Ruth Mendenberg is struggling to recover a sense of hope in her life. A survivor of the brutality of Auschwitz, she has been struggling to deal with the loss of her friend Lotte, who saved her life in the camp, and the ongoing war in Israel that she is now a part of. The novel deals with not only the theme of hope, but the existence of evil in the world.

The novel consists of three parts; Part One is set in Israel from May to June, 1948,  Part Two covers Ruth and Lotte's experiences in Auschwitz from 1943 until the end of the war, and Part Three resumes the story in Israel, June 1948. An Epilogue set in Israel, 1958 provides the satisfying ending to Ruth's story.

Matas explores several relevant and timely themes in A Struggle For Hope, the most interesting being the one of evil in the world. In the kibbutz in Israel, Ruth, her brother Simon, and her boyfriend Zvi discuss the existence of God based on the horrendous evil they have all confronted as Jews during the Holocaust. Three years later, Ruth continues to struggle to understand what happened to her. "Why did they do it? How could they do it? Why did so-called good, ordinary people let them do it? How could God let is happen? Does he exist? And if he does, does he care, even a little bit?"

Simon believes that God wants people to behave a certain way, but Zvi doesn't believe in God at all. "Any god that would murder millions because they didn't pray enough or follow his stupid rules is a cruel and vindictive god," says Zvi." However, Ruth suggests that maybe God couldn't do anything because of free will. "If he makes us do thing we would just be puppets." She tells Zvi, "...why would God create a world where men can be so evil and in fact where evil can thrive?"  Ruth then goes on to explain what Lotte told her while they were in the concentration camp - that people freely chose Hitler because they wanted to make their lives better. The problem is people, not God.

In Part Two, a flashback to Ruth's time in Auschwitz, we learn that she was helped by an older girl named Lotte Rosenthal. Lotte tries to explain to Ruth how things got to the point where the Nazis are now murdering millions of people. Lotte explains this to Ruth because if she survives she wants her to make sure this never happens again. Lotte explains that Hitler succeeded because "he  repeated a lie over and over and over again. At first, people knew the things he said weren't true. But they got tired of correcting him over and over again, and they became confused too. What was a lie and what was the truth? You never knew with him. And then it didn't matter because it became too dangerous to correct him. And then people simply began to believe the lies..."

At the end of the novel, Ruth tells Zvi she desires real peace. Remembering Nazi Germany she states, "...I want us all to be better Zvi. I never want us to be small or little or mean. I want peace,...Real peace, except not at any price. Not at the price of giving in to our leaders if they are wrong. We could easily go down the wrong path here, in our new land, if we aren't careful."  He tells Ruth that they can "choose to make ourselves better. We can be the hope." The hope is that in remembering how Nazi Germany happened, we can make the choice to never allow it to happen again.

A Struggle For Hope is set in the aftermath of World War II in the newly created state of Israel. It's likely most young readers may not have the background knowledge to appreciate the setting of the novel or the events of the War of Independence in the Middle East. Matas does offer some background information in her Afterword. A map of the newly formed state of Israel would have been helpful for her readers to help them situation the events in the novel.

A Struggle For Hope is another well-written novel by Carol Matas and is highly recommended for middle grade students. Matas, who was born and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba is known for incorporating important issues into her novels. 

Book Details:

A Struggle For Hope by Carol Matas
Toronto: Scholastic Canada Ltd.  2021
186 pp.

In My Enemy's House by Carol Matas

In My Enemy's House is a well written piece of historical fiction by Canadian author Carol Matas. This novel tells the fictitious story of a young Jewish girl during the occupation of Poland by the Nazis in World War II.

Marisa Gingrich is a 15 year old Jewish girl living in Zloczow, a city in Poland that had been initially occupied by the Russians for two years until they were driven out by the German push into Russia. Marisa, who is the oldest child, lives with her Mama and Papa and her younger siblings, Fanny, Sarah, Yehuda, and Moishe. Unlike her siblings who have dark hair and brown eyes, Marisa has blonde hair and blue eyes - features common to the Ayran ideal, which will help her survive in these deadly times.

Initially, it seems all the Germans want is to use the Jews for slave labour, for cleaning and working in the factories. However, the local Ukrainians have formed a police service and are beginning to round up Jews.

Prior to all this, Marisa was leading a normal life as a young teenager, going to school, and even developing a crush on her "cousin", Shmuel, who is the sixteen year old step-son of her Uncle Avraham. When she and Shmuel are seen holding hands, her father tells her that she mustn't do this. The next day when Marisa's Papa goes to speak with his brother, Avraham, about this situation, they are both taken by the Ukrainian police. Shmuel tells Marisa's family that he followed their fathers and saw them loaded onto a freight train. Marisa feels terribly guilty over her father being taken, because she knows he would not have been there that day, if she and Shmuel hadn't held hands, and also because her last words to her father were defiant. She directs her anger towards Shmuel, who tells her to recognize that it is the Nazi's who are at fault.

Meanwhile the Nazis begin separating the Jews from the Poles, whom they consider useless and stupid. Himmler closes all the schools, Jews are forced to wear a white armband with a blue star of David, and they begin conducting "actions" in which large numbers of Jews are arrested and removed from the city. Some Jews are simply taken outside their homes and shot in the streets. Marisa's family is saved again and again by the kind actions of their Polish neighbour, Mr. Kraszewski, who was in the Polish military. When the Russians attacked Zloczow, Marisa's family hid him. Now he has been returning the favour by hiding her family in his attic whenever the Nazis come rounding up Jews.

Because of her looks, Marisa is able to pass herself off as Polish and therefore, get into line with the Poles for food. As the food situation becomes more dire and the Germans decide to round up all the Jews and place them in a ghetto, Marisa's mother and Shmuel tell Marisa that someone from their families must survive and that she can use her looks to pass herself off as Polish and go to Germany to work. Once again Mr. Kraszewski steps in and offers Marisa the chance to use a friend's daughter's papers to get into Germany. The irony of her situation is not lost on Marisa; she must go to Germany to survive the Nazi mass murder of her people.

As the situation worsens and Marisa's indecision about what to do deepens, she struggles with thoughts of suicide and despair as well as struggling with her belief in God. Eventually Marisa goes to Lvov and then on to Berlin in the hopes that she will survive the war. Will she ever see her family again? Will she and Shmuel ever meet again in this life?

Discussion

Carol Matas has crafted a well-written short novel that explores the meaning of forgiveness and faith when the world is succumbing to hate and chaos. When Fanny, Yehuda, Marisa and Shmuel are the only ones left, they struggle to decide what to do. Fanny announces that she hates God, but Marisa tells her that faith is important to fight evil.

The best and most interesting parts of this novel though revolve around Marisa's stay with a Berlin family whose father is a highly placed Nazi officer. Marisa manages to get hired on by Herr Reymann who owns a large farm and has three children ages ten, twelve, and fourteen. Unlike other German families, the Polish workers are invited to eat around the dinner table with the Reymann family, and when Marisa becomes seriously ill, Frau Reymann tends to her in a caring manner, genuinely concerned for Marisa's health. Yet the family plays a game called Jews Out and show Marisa a picture of their uncle doing his "important work" which shows German soldiers murdering naked Polish men, women and children in front of an open pit. Marisa struggles to understand what she is experiencing,

"I couldn't understand the world I lived in. It felt like a type of dream where nothing made sense. The children seemed so nice. Their parents, too. They were the kind of people who would probably never cheat or lie or steal. They were "good" people. And yet they could murder, with no problem. I had to conclude then that they saw Jews as not even human. They had to believe in that lie so deeply that murder was no long murder; torture and cruelty no long held the same meaning."

Matas uses the Reymann children to demonstrate how an entire population of a country could be brainwashed to believe that one race is superior to all others. In a turnabout, Marisa creates a lie about how her family has Aryan blood resulting in Frau Reymann allowing her daughter, Carolyn, to take Marisa to some of the Nazi functions. At these functions she sees the Germans doing volunteer work mending clothes taken from murdered Jews and occupied countries to help those in Germany.

Both the Reynmann's and Marisa have to deal with falsehoods about each other. For example, the Reymann children are taught that all Jews have slimy voices, ugly gestures, huge hooked noses and small beady eyes all the while unknowingly having taken in a beautiful Jewish girl. And Marisa must come to terms with her understanding of all Nazi's being evil as she struggles to comprehend Frau Reymann's motherly touches even though she is a Nazi. In a dream her father tells her that she must find the presence of God even in her enemies, echoing Shmuel's admonition to keep love in her heart rather than hate.

In My Enemy's House is highly recommended for its thoughtful treatment of  the Holocaust, incorporating the themes of the nature of evil, identity, forgiveness and redemption. As with many historical novels, maps of Poland and Germany would have been helpful to help young readers understand the geography of the story.

Book Details:
In My Enemy's House by Carol Tatas
Toronto: Scholastics Canada Ltd.     1999
158 pp.