The Watchmaker's Daughter by Larry Loftis

Those who have read Corrie ten Boom's autobiography, The Hiding Place will relish this new, well-researched offering by New York Times award winning author, Larry Loftis. The Watchmaker's Daughter begins by setting the stage for the drama that would play out during World War II and the Nazi occupation of Holland. In Chapter 1, The Watchmakers, the history of the ten Boom family and the start of their watchmaking business is described. The story really begins in 1837 when Willem ten Boom rented the house at Barteljorisstraat 19 in Haarlem, Holland. In 1844, Willem, now married to Geertruida van Gogh, began praying for "God's ancient people", the Jews. This practice would be passed on to his children and grandchildren in the years to come.

Geertruida passed away from tuberculosis in 1856 and in 1858, Willem married Elizabeth Bell. Their first son, Casper eventually opened his own watchmaking shop. After the death of his father, Casper and his wife, Cor, along with their family of four children, Elisabeth (Betsie),  Willem, Arnolda (Nollie) and Cornelia (Corrie), returned to Haarlem, where they took over the shop. It was Corrie who expressed interest in continuing the family business, while Willem decided to study theology at the University of Leiden. Eventually he became pastor at a church in Zuylen near Utrecht. Willem became interested in the development of anti-Semitism, which was particularly evident in both France and Germany. 

Corrie's mother died in 1921, the year that Corrie became the first licensed female watchmaker in Holland. Meanwhile, Willem continued studying the evil of anti-Semitism and accepted a position as a special missionary to the Jews in Amsterdam. Incredibly, he studied at the Institutum Judaicum in Leipzig, Germany where for the next three years he completed work on his doctoral thesis, "The birth of modern racial anti-Semitism in France and Germany". At this time, Adolf Hitler was writing Mein Kampf which was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926. Willem's dissertation was published in 1928, just five years before Hitler would rise to power in Germany. 

After finishing his Ph.D, Willem began his ministry to Jews in Amsterdam. In 1933, German president Paul von Hindenburg installed Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany and the persecution of Jews began. Boycotts of Jewish businesses, and the barring of Jews from all civil service jobs, schools and universities included, as well as the prohibition of Jews from practicing law or medicine became the law. The Nuremberg Laws, enacted in 1935 stripped German Jews of citizenship and made it illegal for them to marry "Aryans". Persecution of Jews and Christians who opposed the persecution was ramped up after the 1936 Olympics. 

While the situation remained normal in Holland, in March 1938, Germany annexed Austria and the persecution of Austrian Jews began. The Munich Agreement between Germany, France and Britain did little to stop Hitler. The attempted assassination of Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in retaliation for the forced transport of eighteen thousand German Jews brought on Kristallnacht - Night of the Broken Glass on November 9th. 

The first hint of the coming storm in Holland arrived within the Beje when Casper had to fire a young German apprentice, Otto Altschuler after they learned he brutally assaulted a man the shop had hired to help with repairs. That man was the elderly, gentle Mr. Christoffels.

As Hitler began his march through Europe, Holland was invaded on May 10, 1940. Despite fierce resistance, the Germans quickly occupied the Netherlands and began to target the Jewish population with ever-restrictive laws. As the persecution raged on in 1941, Corrie and her father, Casper began discussing and planning how they would help their Jewish neighbours. Soon they began hiding Jews who came to Beje for help, sending them on to safe houses. But this was only the beginning of resistance by the ten Boom family and in particular Corrie and her brother Willem. They quickly became involved in the underground, and built a secret room at the back of their house which became "the hiding place". What was once just a simple task of hiding Jews for a night before they could be moved, became a high stakes "cat and mouse" game with the Nazis. Corrie and her family would not escape unscathed.

Discussion

The Watchmaker's Daughter is a moving account of the life of Corrie ten Boom, beginning from her early life, through the war years as she and her family worked to save Jews, her arrest and imprisonment in various concentration camps, and her ministry after the war to both camp survivors and the German people.

Loftis who had authored a number of narrative nonfiction books focused on World War II espionage, was looking for new subject material. He knew about Corrie ten Boom and that her experience focused on the Dutch Resistance - potentially a new topic to explore. Corrie had written six books about her family and the war, including The Hiding Place, but much of what happened was not included. Loftis was able to draw on a number of key primary sources to write The Watchmaker's Daughter: long time refugee Hans Poley's Return to the Hiding Place, nephew Peter van Woerden's memoir The Secret Place, and Corrie's own collection of letters, photos and much more which were held in an archival collection at Wheaton College. Loftis also wanted to focus on Corrie's efforts after the war, to heal the wounds suffered by so many, including the German people. 

Writing The Watchmaker's Daughter had a lasting impact on Loftis as well. He writes in his Author's Note that "...writing about Corrie's message of faith, hope, love, and forgiveness was an empowering experience for me..."  Loftis succeeds in capturing this message throughout The Watchmaker's Daughter. In fact, the most inspirational aspect of Corrie's story is not her survival, but the heroic virtue displayed by her entire family, but most especially by her sister Betsie, in the face of great cruelty. The ten Boom's encounters with Lieutenant Hans Rahms at Scheveningen Prison, proved that such virtue could change minds and hearts. 

Loftis takes care to set Corrie's story within the larger context of events that were occurring each year during World War II. For example, he includes not only historical details from the war, but also mentions Audrey Hepburn who played a part in the Dutch Resistance, and Anne Frank and her family who were in hiding in Amsterdam, until their betrayal in August of 1944. There are also many black and white photographs throughout, helping readers to know many of the people in Corrie's story.

The Watchmaker's Daughter is ultimately a story of hope and forgiveness. This is very evident in Corrie's struggle both during the war, but even more so after the war. Especially poignant, is the account of her meeting the man, who had been an SS guard in a shower room at Ravensbruck, at a speaking event in Munich. Repulsed at the sight of this man who had been so cruel, Corrie struggled to offer him the forgiveness he asked for. And yet she did, through God's grace, despite this man not apologizing for what he did to her.

To those who loved The Hiding Place, this work provides a richer context and backstory, informing readers as to how the ten Boom's resistance to the Nazis began a century earlier with their immense love and charity towards God's "ancient people", the Jews. Loftis lays out the history that shaped a family and their courageous resistance at great personal cost.

Loftis offers his readers a list of major people in the Dramatis Personae at the front of the book. This includes the members of the ten Book family, refugees in the Beje and the Dutch Resistance. At the back of the book, The Rest of the Story informs readers of the fate of many of the major German and Dutch people in the book. An Appendix offers a list of Jewish or Dutch diver refugees at the Beje during the war. The author has also provided an extensive Notes section for each chapter. Maps of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Germany during World War II would have been much appreciated.

The Watchmaker's Daughter will appeal to not just those interested in Corrie ten Boom, but also those interested in  World War II history and resistance.

Book Details:

The Watchman's Daughter by Larry Loftis
New York:  HarperCollins Publishers     2023
370 pp.

But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust edited by Charlotte Schallie

In this poignant graphic novel memoir, three stories of four children who survived the horrors of the Holocaust are told first in graphic novel form, then in their own words.

In the first story, A Kind of  Resistance, David Schaffer's story is told through the illustrations of Miriam Libicki. David was born in 1931 in Vama, Bucovina which was part of Romania at that time. Their trouble began in 1939 when David was no longer able to attend public school. His teacher, Mr. Twardovski came to his home to tell his parents this so that he would not have to shame David in front of his classmates.

In 1940, David and his family had to leave their family home, taking only what they could carry. The Romanian government ordered Jews out of the rural areas and into the cities. They were sent to Gura Humorului and placed in a ghetto, before being sent to a train station to be "evacuated". Accompanying them was David's maternal great-grandmother who was carried on a kind of stretcher because she was unable to walk.

They were taken to Ataki located on the Dniester River, and sent to a rundown house with no doors or windows and blood on the walls. After this the Jews were taken across the Dniester River and were ordered to walk in convoys by the Romanian soldiers. It was here that David's family had to leave behind his great-grandmother to die, alone. 

 

At Kopaigord, the Jews were left by the army. David's father discovered that it was not safe for them to remain, so at nightfall David and his parents walked off into the woods. By November 1941 they had arrived in a small village, Ivashkovtsi which was occupied by Romanian soldiers. As they fled through the woods, they were joined by the Landau family consisting of Marcus and Nellie and their two daughters, Annie and Fritzi and their grandmother. 

 

Together David's family and the Landau family were helped by a Ukrainian family who allowed them to stay in their summer kitchen. They would stay in this area, sometimes hiding in the woods, sometimes hiding underground as German soldiers searched the woods, until the area was liberated by the Soviets in 1944. Then they began their journey back to their home in Romania.

In the second story, Thirteen Secrets, Nico and Rolf Kamp's story is told through the artwork of Gilad Seliktar.  Rolf begins the story by telling Gilad they lived in Amersfoort with their parents, Fritz and Inge. They were originally from Germany however they also spoke Dutch. Their father owned a factory in Holland and often went there for business. Rolf's brother Nico was three years youngers and when he was very young, he had a girlfriend named Betty. Rolf and Nico's grandparents lived only ten blocks from them.

Things began to change in 1940 with planes flying overhead. Eventually Rolf had to leave school and go to a new Jewish school and Nico to a Jewish kindergarten. Then they had to start wearing the Jewish star on their clothing.

They were taken to their first hiding place in June, 1942. Nico was five years old. Their mother removed the Jewish stars that were sewn onto all their clothing before they left. Rolf and Nico were taken to the Amersfoort train station by a "very nice gentleman". Their first hideout was with a young couple that they called aunt and uncle and they were given new names: Rolf became Rudolf and Nico became Klaas. Unfortunately, when Nico divulged their secret about being Jewish amongst strangers, the underground was contacted and the two boys were moved to a farm in Leusden.  After this it was to a farm in Stoutenberg, then to hide in a chicken coop. In the spring of 1944, Nico and Rolf were taken in by the Traa family in Achterveld, where seventeen people ended up being hidden by the end of the war. Nico's memories were somewhat different from his brother's but in the end they were reunited with their mother who had survived Auschwitz and Libau.

 

In the third story, But I Live, illustrated by Barbara Yelin, tells the experiences of Emmie Arbel who now lives in  Kiryat Tiv'on, Israel.  Emmie was born in Holland and had two brothers, Menachem and Rudi. When she was four-years-old, two policemen came to their house and took the family to Westerbrook transit camp. Emmie remembers the constant fear of being deported to other camps. Her father was taken away first, then Emmie, her mother, Rudi and her older brother were taken to Ravensbruck. Emmie remembers how the women at Westerbrook were so oddly dressed with their blue and white striped clothing, the women crying at night and the constant hunger. At Ravensbruck, Emmie remembers them being ordered to take off all their clothes and having her hair cut. 

Like the other prisoners, Emmie was made to stand for hours, even while her own mother fainted. To help her mother would mean death. Gradually the memories of life in Holland faded away. A few days after liberation, Emmie and Rudi watched their mother die. Emmie knew her mother had to eat but that she had given her food so that Emmie could live.

After the war, Emmie and Rudi traveled to Sweden where she spent some time in the hospital recovering from tuberculosis. In the foster home, she set fire to the curtains, wanting to burn down the house. In 1946, Emmie and Rudi returned to Holland and were they were adopted by a Jewish family along with their brother Menachem. Eventually they moved to Israel.

Discussion 

But I Live is a memoir of four Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. There are three parts to this book: the first part is their story told in illustrated form, the second part is comprised of essays placing the child survivor's experiences within the context of the war, and the third is their story in their own words. There is also a section written by the graphic artists about this project.

In the first part, described above, each survivor tells a graphic artist about their experiences and these are portrayed in the accompanying artwork. David's story focuses on his family working together to survive in hiding in the woods. Nico and Rolf's story highlights how the underground managed to save children by hiding them in various safe houses throughout the war. Emmie's story is about a very young child experiencing the horrors of the concentration camp system and the many things that still trigger flashbacks and unpleasant memories.

 

In the second part each essay attempts to explain some aspect of the survivors' experiences within the larger context of the events of World War II. For example, in the essay The Holocaust in Transnistria by Alexander Korb, David's experiences are explained within the larger context of the history of this region. Korb explains how David's family was able to beat the odds and survive because the Holocaust in Romania as "neither controlled nor guarded by the Germans....The less systematic manner of persecution, horrific as it was, provided the Romanian Jews with higher chances of survival, because there were ways to fight back and to disobey the rules. The survival of David's family makes that perfectly clear." 

These essays also attempt to explain how recent history may have impacted the experiences the child survivors had. For example, Transnistria belonged to the Soviet Union after World War I and anti-Semitism was not tolerated so there was no association between the Jews and Soviet occupation like there was in other parts of Eastern Europe. And one possible reason that David's family was helped by the local Ukrainian population, is that having survived the Holodomor, the man-made famine caused by Stalin, Ukrainians knew what it meant to starve so they helped the hiding Jews.

In Surviving In Hiding From the Nazis by Dienke Hondius, Rolf and Nico Kamp's story is clarified as they were very young when war engulfed them. Neither remember much about where they lived or their early life. Hondius speculates on who exactly helped hid the Kamp children and explores what it was like to be in hiding, coping with sudden extreme dangers and having to act very quickly. This piece also mentions how the trauma continued during the post-war period as survivors returned home to find all their possessions gone, either destroyed or stolen. Although they remained silent for many decades, the child survivors have, in the last few years, found their voice to tell their stories.

 

In Andrea Low's essay, Surviving Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen As A Child, the horrific experience of being a very young child in the concentration camp system is explored. Low describes the extent of the German camp system, which was continually being added to throughout the war and the catastrophic conditions that little Emmie would have had to endure, including being surrounded constantly by people dying and the prospect of death.

The third part of this collaborative effort has David Schaeffer, Nico and Rolf Kamp and Emmie Arbel also relate, in their own words, their experiences as child survivors of the Holocaust and fills in some of the details not explored in the illustrated versions of their stories.

But I Live is an intimate look at the experiences of four child survivors of the Holocaust, allowing readers to experience their stories visually through the graphic novel medium, to learn about a specific aspect of each story from a historical perspective, and then to read about these experiences from the survivors themselves. Perhaps the most moving of all the stories is that of Emmie, whose experiences at Ravensbruck continue to haunt her, even in her old age. The other three survivors, David, Nico and Rolf did not experience the concentration camps. Emmie's experiences were so traumatizing that simple acts like her daughter cutting her hair short or eating a yoghurt brought back triggering memories of the camp. She doesn't like crowds and needs to have her back to a wall in a restaurant.

But I Live is the fruit of a "collaborative research project that brought together Holocaust survivors, graphic artists, Holocaust and Human Rights educations professionals, historians, student teachers, high school teachers, librarians, and archivists over the course of three years. The three graphic novelists were invited to meet with four Holocaust child survivors...asking them to jointly explore storylines, settings, and themes." From their Afterword, the graphic artists write, "As each survivor holds unique knowledge not only of the mass atrocity itself but also of the process of sharing and shaping their life memories, it became imperative for the artists to anchor their visual narratives in the voices of the four child survivors. Thus, when we read But I Live, we hear the voices of the survivors as they are visually reimagined..." The artists indicate that working with the survivors using an "art-based approach"  helped them recall new memories and facilitated the relationship between the artist and the child survivor. 

But I Live is informative, deeply moving and an important addition to Holocaust literature and is highly recommended for high school students. It demonstrates the varied experience of the Holocaust and retains these experiences and lessons for future generations. The goal is preventative:  that something like the Holocaust never happen again. As Emmie Arbel offers, "My words are especially meant for you, the younger generation: Accept people who are different. And spread good in the world, not bad." Amen.

Book Details:

But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust by Charlotte Schallie
Toronto: New Jewish Press    2022
189 pp.

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War by Matt Faulkner

It is Koji Miyamoto's thirteenth birthday on Sunday, December 7th, 1941. He has the radio on, listening to the Lone Ranger when the broadcast is interrupted by the announcement that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. Koji and his mother don't know where Pearl Harbor is, so they get out their atlas. Meanwhile they learn that thousands are reported dead or wounded.

Koji wonders if his father might have flown one of the attacking planes but his mother tells him this is ridiculous. Rumors are that President Roosevelt will declare war on Japan.

Although Koji tries to focus on his homework, it is impossible. That night he has a dream that his father was flying on the planes.

The next day Koji begins to experience hostility from people as he walks to school. He overhears people suggesting that every Japanese person should be sent back to Japan. And at school he gets into a fight after another student calls him a "Jap". Instead of helping him, Principal Dorfman accuses Koji of being a troublemaker.

Koji eats lunch alone and is refused entry onto a streetcar. He arrives home to find his mother crying and learns that FBI agents have taken their radio from anyone who is Japanese.

Koji's mother believes that things will quiet down, but the abuse continues both at school and on the street. Then they receive a letter informing them that Koji is to be sent to a "relocation camp" because he's considered an "enemy alien". 

The next morning his mother's attempted intervention at the army office doesn't work and instead Koji and his mother are assigned to the Alameda Downs Assembly Center. At home they learn they can only take two suitcases with them and they sell the rest of their possessions. They are also questioned by the FBI who want to know when Koji's mother last heard from her husband and Koji's father, Ichiro. She tells them he returned to Japan because his father was ill.

On relocation day, Koji and his mother Adeline are placed on a bus where they meet Ichiro's former employers, Hana and Yoshi Asai. They travel across San Francisco Bay to the Alameda Downs Assembly Center, which used to be a horse-racing track. There they are assigned to Stall 33, a horse stall that stinks of horse manure and urine. Dinner is a large room crammed with people eating spam, beans and turnip. 

The next morning when Koji takes a walk through the camp he is set upon by a group of teens and called "gaijin". Kohi gets into a fight, breaks a window and is taken to the commander who assigns him to work with his family's friend Mr. Asai. 

As the weeks go by, Koji continues to deal with the Japanese boys who refuse to accept him because of his fair hair and freckles, and who force him into stealing. He also believes his mother's apparent friendship with the camp commander is the source of gossip about her. But with Mr. Asai's help, Koji is able to break free of the gang tormenting him.

Discussion

Gaijin is based on the real life story of the author's great-grandmother Adeline Conlin, an Irish American woman who married a Japanese man in the 1920's. This inter-racial marriage was not accepted in neither Japan where the couple lived and had a daughter named Mary, nor in America where Adeline and Mary returned after the devastating earthquake of 1923. However, they found they were not accepted in Boston either, so they moved to Los Angeles, California. Mary married and had two children. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, because Mary was part Japanese, she was forced to move with her two children to an internment camp. Adeline, who was not Japanese went with her daughter and grandchildren, travelling to Owens, California and then to Manzanar War Relocation Center. In 1943, the family was sponsored to move eastward, to Chicago. Falkner, in his back material titled, Finding Adeline, only learned about his family's past when he saw a post on the National Park Service-Manzanar website by Adeline's great-granddaughter, Anita asking for anyone who might be related to Adeline to contact her.

Through the graphic novel format, Faulkner portrays the story of a young Japanese American boy trying to find his place in the tumultuous world of World War II and the Pearl Harbor attack. The story is a personal one, because his own family experienced the lack of acceptance in both Japan and in America for being biracial. The focus in Gaijin is on the racism that a Japanese American boy, Koji experiences when America is attacked by the Japanese. The attack serves to focus the underlying racism towards Asian Americans that already existed in California and in other parts of the United States up until this time.

Koji not only experiences racism from white Americans, but when he arrives at the internment camp, he finds himself being attacked by Japanese Americans as well. He is called "gaijin", a derogatory term that means "outsider". Mr. Asai explains to Koji that the term is a very unkind one and he tells him to refer to his father as Issei or first generation, and that Koji is Nisei or second generation. 

Faulkner is able to effectively portray many of the problems Japanese Americans experienced during World War II. For example, many Japanese Americans were interrogated by the FBI who suspected them of being spies. In another example, Mr. and Mrs. Asai assume they have found someone decent to rent their home while they are away, in the internment camp. However, when Mr. Asai visits his property on a day pass, he discovers the tenants have broken into his shed and are using his property as though it is their own. Many Japanese Americans lost everything they owned prior to being sent to the camps, including their possessions, their homes, their businesses and their land.

Koji and Adeline's experiences are portrayed in illustrations using mainly brown, sepia and blue, creating a dreary and sad mood expected in being sent away to a concentration camp in a dusty desert. Koji's dreams are done in vivid red, orange and yellow.

Gajin offers young readers an excellent starting point for learning about this important era in United States history and to explore racism and how it impacts both perpetrators and victims.  Faulkner includes a variety of resources at the back including Books and Periodicals, Documentary Films and Websites.

Book Details:

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War by Matt Faulkner
New York: Hyperion Books      2014

They Went Left by Monica Hesse

They Went Left is Monica Hesse's newest offering. This novel focuses on the post-World War II period as a holocaust survivor, eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman, searches among the ruins of Europe for her missing twelve-year-old brother.

It is August 1945 and Zofia is preparing to leave the camp where she has been for the last few months regaining her health. Zofia was barely alive in Gross-Rosen when it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in February. She was found in the women's barracks by Dima Sokolov, a Russian soldier. Now Dima waits for her to be processed out of the camp so he can drive her to Sosnowiec, her home town. Zofia hopes that her twelve-year-old brother, Abek who was in Birkenau which was liberated before Gross-Rosen, will have returned there.

Zofia remembers how they became separated. Three years into the occupation of Sosnowiec, on August 12, 1942, all the remaining Jews were ordered to go to the soccer stadium under the pretense of being issued new identification. But when Zofia and her family arrived at the stadium, they like other Jews waited for days to be sorted by health, age and by who looked strong enough to work. Eventually, Zofia's family was sorted, she and Abek were sent to the right. Everyone else in her family, "Papa, Mama, Baba Rose, beautiful Aunt Maja.....they went left."

Her experiences at Birkenau and Gross-Rosen have left her struggling to remember and to distinguish real memories from dreams.

With Dima's help, Zofia returns to her family's apartment in Sosnowiec, their real home before the Nazis forced all six of them into an apartment in the Jewish ghetto. While Dima goes to report in to his superiors, Zofia walks to her family's home on Mariacka Street. She finds their apartment empty, no furniture and no Abek. A neighbour, Pani Wojcik tells Zofia she hasn't seen him. In a closet, Zofia finds a hope chest filled with clothing they couldn't take with them when they were forced to leave home and into the ghetto. In it she finds her mother's wedding dress along with clothing that Zofia had made for her brother or aunt. In her brother's jacket, she had sewed in the story of their family in the form of the alphabet. "A is for Abek. B is for Baba Rose. C is for Chomicki & Lederman, the factory we own, and Dis for Dekerta, the street we attend synagogue on,....H is for our mother, Helena; M is for Aunt Maja; Z is for Zofia."

Dima arrives at the apartment telling Zofia that he has invited his Commander for dinner. When Zofia goes to the bakery to buy bread, she meets a friend, Gosia who survived the war in hiding. Gosia tries to help Zofia locate her brother by asking Salomon Prager who survived and who may have seen Abek. Dima, Commander Kuznetsov, and Gosia have dinner at Zofia's apartment. During the dinner Zofia learns that Abek may have been transferred to either Bergen-Belsen or Dachau which are near Munich. She also learns that Dima has learned that Abek is not at Bergen-Belsen but he doesn't know about Dachau or Birkenau. Zofia is told that if Abek was evacuated from Birkenau he is likely to be in a refugee camp called Foehrenwald near Munich. When Dima comes to stay overnight in order to protect Zofia, she quietly leaves after he falls asleep and takes a train from Silesia to Germany. 

So begins Zofia's hunt for her brother. It will take her deep into Germany to a displaced persons camp in Munich where Zofia will finally confront her past so she can face the future.

Discussion

They Went Left is a heart-rending story of a Holocaust survivor confronting the past she has blocked out to protect herself as she struggles to reclaim her life at the end of World War II.

Hesse, who has written several World War II historical fiction novels, wanted to write a story that focused on the post-war period. "I realized that most of the books I'd read and documentaries I'd seen all finished at the same place: the end of the war. They ended with the liberation of a concentration camp. The disbanding of an army unit. A celebration in the streets. There was much less about what happened in the weeks and months after the war, when an entire continent had to find a way to recover from the suffering it had experienced and the atrocities it had committed." 

 

On a trip through Europe and specifically on a train ride through a city called Sosnowiec, Hesse was inspired "...to re-create, as best I could, what might have happened to a young woman who had been taken from that town at the beginning of the war, and who now had to return to it."  In her "A Note on History and Research" Hesse takes readers through her stages of research and how she attempted to recreate some of the historical points in her story. For example, Zofia's imprisonment was patterned from the historical event of young women with sewing skills being sent as slave labour to Neustadt, a textile factory, and then forced to march to Gross-Rosen in the winter near the end of the war in Europe.

The result is a novel that not only provides readers with a window into postwar Europe, but also to the challenges Jews who survived the Holocaust encountered. Most had lost almost all immediate family.  Few children survived the war, as most were gassed or brutally murdered as Zofia witnessed. Many survivors suffered from serious physical ailments like Zofia who lost toes to frostbite. Some survived only to die a few days, weeks or months after, as in the case of Miriam's twin sister Rose. Most had no homes to return to, either being destroyed in the war or repossessed by neighbours or strangers who refused to leave. Attitudes in many European countries towards the Jewish population continued to be hostile, as demonstrated by the threats Zofia received while staying at her family's home in Sosnowiec. As a result, many like Breine and Chaim, emigrated to Israel while others like Zofia and Abek moved to North America. In this way, Hesse has effectively captured an accurate snapshot of postwar Europe for young readers, making this historical fiction at its best.

In They Went Left, the story opens with Zofia Lederman leaving the hospital to begin the search for her brother, Abek. With the help of two Russian soldiers, Zofia follows a lead that takes her to a displaced persons camp, Foehrenwald, near Munich. Throughout this time, Zofia seems confused, unable to concentrate, mixing up names and forgetting events that have just happened. And she continues to have dreams about her missing brother.

Hesse gives hints that something about Zofia's memories is not quite right through a series of dreams Zofia experiences, about the last time she saw Abek. The novel opens with the first version of the dream in which Abek is a healthy boy and she is about to be transferred out of Birkenau. "But then something changes. Then dream-Abek's face twists, and his words come out pained: 'Something happened,' this Abek says. 'But we don't have to talk about it yet.' " This suggests that something about this memory or dream is not quite as it seems and that it is something Zofia is unable to cope with at this time. Each dream Zofia has is not quite a true recounting of what actually happened to Zofia and Abek as they are forced from Sosnowiec and travel to Birkenau. They are what she terms, "A dream version, not the real version, and as soon as I realize that, I open my eyes."  

Eventually Zofia has a dream that places her and Abek in a dark space. He tells her 

" 'Is it time yet?' he asks. 'Is it time to think about the last time you saw me?'

'I'm trying,' I tell him, 'I'm trying.'

'You're getting closer,' he says, 'You're getting closer, so please make a promise to me, Zofia. Make one guarantee: that this is the last time you lie about the last time you saw me.'

'How can it be a lie if I don't know what the truth is?' I ask.

'The absences of the truth is not the presence of a lie. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. '"

By this time it's evident that Zofia is suppressing something so terrible she mustn't remember it.

When she arrives in Foehrenwald to search for her brother, the kindness of the refugees helps Zofia and her mental state improves. She begins a relationship with a man named Josef Meuller and she rediscovers her skill for sewing and tailoring as her family once owned a clothing factory. She takes a trip to the Kloster Indersdorf, a camp that took in children from Dachau to see if Abek is there but this proves fruitless. The kindly nun, Sister Therese who runs the camp, offers to post notices and shortly afterwards, Abek shows up at Foehrenwald. It seems unbelievable.

 

But soon Zofia comes to the realization that the boy claiming to be her brother is not her brother. This and the realization of Josef's true identity force Zofia to confront what really happened in the train to Abek at Birkenau. This memory had been suppressed so she could survive through the horror of each day. "I left pieces of myself in that car. I left pieces I will never get back. I left them unwillingly, as my mind forced itself to block away those impossible, impossible minutes. I left them willingly for my own protection, because remembering that story would have demolished every reason I had to survive. And beyond all reason, beyond any possible explanation, I still did want to survive."

Although Abek was gone, his story lived on in the jacket that Zofia had made for him containing the alphabet of their lives. It was found by another little boy who also wanted to survive and who losing his family hoped to find another. But that alphabet which told the story of Zofia and her family is no more. Now it has changed.

"A is for Abek.

B is for Baba Rose. No. B isn't for Baba Rose any longer. Baba Rose is gone. B is for -- B can be for Breine, effervescent and hopeful, planning her beautiful wedding inside a refugee camp. And C is for Chaim, her timid Hungarian groom.

D is for Dima, who saved me, take me to the hospital and then taking me home to Sosnowiec. 

E is for Esther, kind and steady, apply rouge to the cheeks of her protesting friend.....

X is to x things out. To cross out the things I'll forget on purpose. Some things are okay to forget on purpose....

Z is for Zofia."

 

Zofia, knowing that the boy before her is not Abek, makes a decision to look to the future. "I think we must find miracles where we can. We must love the people in front of us. We must forgive ourselves for the things we did to survive. The things we broke. The things that broke us." 

 

Well-written and well researched, They Went Left is story filled with tragedy and hope. In Zofia, Hesse has crafted a heroine who, despite having experienced the most unimaginable suffering and seen so much death, has survived. This trauma makes her an unreliable narrator for most of the novel. Eventually she is forced to confront the reality of what happened to her and to her family. Only when she is in a place of safety, when she experiences the kindness of others, and when she sees that there is the possibility of a life after the horrors of war, can Zofia being to process what she has experienced.

As one might expect this novel does contain some sexual content and some scenes of death and violence, making it more suitable for older readers.

Book Details:

They Went Left by Monica Hesse

New York: Little, Brown and Company    2020

364 pp.

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

The Hiding Place is a moving account of a Dutch family's work in the underground to save Jews during the Holocaust. It is considered a classic in Christian literature today.

Cornelia Ten Boom was the youngest daughter of Casper ten Boom and Cornelia Johanna Arnolda Luitingh. Corrie as she came to be called, was born on April 15, 1892. The ten Boom family was comprised of three older surviving children; Elizabeth who was called Betsie, Willem, and Arnolda Johanna known as Nollie. The ten Boom family belonged to the Dutch Reformed church and were very devout.

Strongly believing that the world should know the story of what happened in Holland, Corrie wrote about her family's experiences in The Hiding Place. In the book, the story begins with her family's party celebrating the 100th anniversary of their watchmaking and repair shop located in Haarlem. The shop had been founded by her grandfather Willem ten Boom. It is 1937, only a few years before the horror that will soon consume Europe and come to be known as the Holocaust. Corrie is forty-five years old, her older sister Betsie is fifty-two.

In celebration of their anniversary, the shop and family home begins filling with bouquets of flowers from friends and patrons. In addition to Nollie and Willem attending, both of whom now have their own homes, the family is visited by many people including the mayor of Haarlem, the postman and policemen.

Soon talk at the party turns to the worsening situation in Germany with the arrival of Willem who is accompanied by a dazed and injured young Jewish man. Willem, who runs a home for elderly Jews in Hilversum tells Corrie and her family that the man, Herr Gutlieber whose lower face is badly burned was set on fire by boys in Munich. He managed to flee Germany on a milk truck, arriving this morning in Hilversum.

Corrie remembers that Willem had been studying what was going on in Germany for years. In 1927 he wrote about the unprecedented "contempt for human life" that was growing in the country. He noted the German clockmakers who were suddenly and mysteriously no longer open for business and that they were all Jewish.

There are more signs that things in Germany are deteriorating when Corrie's father hires a young German apprentice named Otto to work at the shop. A member of the Hitler Youth, Otto comes only once to listen to Corrie's family's nightly reading of the scriptures. The Old Testament, according to Otto, "is the Jews' 'Book of Lies' ". Soon the ten Booms learn of other disturbing events. Otto's landlady discovers a large knife in his bed. But it is Otto's cruel treatment of the old clockmender, Christoffels that moves Corrie's father to fire him. Willem reveals that Germany is teaching its young people not to value the elderly who they consider to "have no value to the state."

War comes to Holland in 1940 with the invasion of the country by Germany. For five days the country's army attempts to fight off the Nazis but eventually they are overwhelmed and surrender, with the Queen fleeing to England.

At first life in occupied Holland is little changed except for the late curfew, the presence of German soldiers, and the takeover of the Dutch press which prints German propaganda. At night Corrie and her family listen to the aerial dogfights between the English and German planes, as Germany uses Holland as a launching point for the bombing of England.

But gradually the true horror of the occupation begins to creep into daily life. Minor attacks on Dutch Jews grow into bolder attacks and outright discrimination. Parks, libraries, restaurants and theatres all ban Jews who are now required to wear the six point Jewish star on their clothing. People begin to disappear, as evidenced by the unclaimed watches in the ten Boom shop.

Corrie and Betsie and their father begin to discuss how they might have to help their Jewish neighbours. That chance comes much sooner than expected, in November of 1941. One day Corrie and Betsie watch as German soldiers ransack Weil's Furriers, ordering Mr. Weil out of his store at gunpoint, ransacking their apartment and stealing their furs. Needing to find a safe place for Mr. Weil and make sure his wife knows not to return home from Amsterdam, Corrie takes the train to Willem in Hilversum. With the help of Willem's son Kik, they find a safe place for the Weils.

As the situation for Dutch Jews worsens, Corrie and her family become increasingly involved in helping them. And their efforts of resistance do not go unnoticed. On Sunday, May 10, 1942, Peter, who is the organist at the Dutch Reformed church in Velsen, plays an inspiring rendition of the Dutch national anthem, Wilhelmus, which has been forbidden by the Nazis. He is arrested in the evening. Each evening, the ten Booms found Dutch Jews making their way to their alley door, all in need of a hiding place from the Nazis. Hoping to get help from Willem, Corrie is told that he now is being watched all the time and that it is better if she seeks out her own resources to help those coming to her. 

Needing ration cards for the Jews who come to the Beje, Corrie seeks out Fred Koornstra who used to read the electric meter at the Beje. As the needs grow, Corrie begins to realize that they are friends with half of Haarlem: nurses and clerks and people in almost all the businesses. She would trust God to lead her to the people who could help. But the real break comes when Kik takes her to a meeting of the "underground" There "Pickwick" whose real name was Herman Sluring, introduces Corrie to a man, whom she only ever knew as Mr. Smit - the name used by all members of the underground - who told her she needed a secret room. This "Mr. Smit" would turn out to be one of Europe's finest architects and it was he who built the "hiding place" in the ten Boom's home.

As the hunt for Holland's Jews intensifies, Corrie and her family find they are taking more and more risks. Soon this dangerous work will cost some their freedom, others, their lives. Their faith in God and his providence are their guiding light through the darkest of times.

Discussion

The Hiding Place is much more than just a recounting of one family's experiences during the Nazi occupation of Holland. It is much more than a memoir of Dutch resistance. It is a testament to Christian faith acted upon in a time of great evil. Corrie and Betsie were determined to follow God's will in everything in their lives, sometimes at great cost to themselves and those they loved.

Corrie became an integral part of the Dutch underground, obtaining ration cards, helping Jews to safe houses and even allowing the Beje to undergo renovations creating a secret room. Willem was involved in hiding Jews, along with his son Kik. There was never any question in Corrie and her family's minds as to whether they would help their Jewish neighbours. Service was already an integral part of their lives. It was only a matter of how. Their Christian faith demanded nothing less.

The ten Boom family's life was framed and informed entirely by their Christian faith. Casper ten Boom read scripture to the family at 8:30 in the morning before beginning his work in the watch shop and at night before bed, asking "God's blessing on us through the night." Their mother visited the sick and the poor, "cooking and sewing for the needy in the neighborhood...". Every event in their lives was informed by their Dutch Reformed Protestant faith. For example,  Corrie accompanied her mother who was visiting a young mother whose newborn baby had just died. This experience of death haunted Corrie and she became so distraught that later at home she was unable to eat dinner. Her fear was for the death of her father, Mama and her sister Betsie. Her father uses this moment to impart some of his faith and wisdom, reminding Corrie that he gives her the train ticket just before boarding, when travelling to Amsterdam. "...And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things, too. Don't run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need -- just in time."

L to R: Nollie, Corrie, Casper, Cornelia, Willem and Betsie

Life was lived in service to others in the ten Boom household and Corrie's mother and aunts were exemplary in that regard. Corrie mentions the numerous ways her mother and aunts served their friends and neighbours. Her mother is described as having knit "caps and baby dresses", "composing cheery messages for shutins" When Tante Jans is diagnosed with diabetes, then a terminal illness, she decides to spend what time is left for her, organizing a center for the soldiers, writing and fund raising. When her disease progresses and she has only weeks left, Tante Jans is distraught because she believes she has not done enough in her life to merit salvation. Her worry shows how important service to others was in the ten Boom family and had been for generations.

Perhaps Corrie's birth on Good Friday, April 15, 1892 was a sign of what was to come. She was not expected to survive but she did and grew up to be a woman with strong Christian principles. During an aerial battle over their city, Corrie experienced a premonition in the form of a vision about her family.

While praying for their country as the Nazi invasion began, Corrie experienced this following terrifying vision. "Then as I watched, a kind of odd, old farm wagon -- old fashioned and out of place in the middle of a city -- came lumbering across the square pulled by four enormous black horses. To my surprise I saw that I myself was sitting in the wagon. And Father too! And Betsie! There were many others, some strangers, some friends. I recognized Pickwick and Toos, Willem and young Peter. All together we were slowly being drawn across the square behind those horses. We couldn't get off the wagon, that was the terrible thing. It was taking us away -- far away, I felt -- but we didn't want to go...." At the time Corrie had no idea what the vision could possibly mean, but years later, when she, her sister Betsie, Peter, Nollie, Pickwick and her father are taken away after a raid on her house, Corrie remembers the dream. It was a warning, perhaps to help her prepare for what was to come.

As the occupation continued, Corrie was deeply conflicted as to how they would work in the underground given the rumours about the types of resistance involved. "The rumors tended to get more spectacular with each repetition. But always they featured things we believed were wrong in the sight of God. Stealing, lying, murder. Was this what God wanted in times like these? How should a Christian act when evil was in power?"

It is something that Corrie and her family struggled with as the months went by. After a search by German soldiers for young men for forced work, the family argued over whether it was permissible to lie to protect someone. While Nollie believed that "God honors truth-telling with perfect protection!" as her daughter Corky had just done. But Corrie is not so certain.

The title of Corrie's autobiography is more than just a reference to the secret room in the Beje. It is also a spiritual reference, one Corrie did not realize until she was in prison. Watching ants hiding in the wall of her cell Corrie understands the significance of having a special safe place in Christ. "And suddenly I realized that this too was a message, ...For I too had a hiding place when things were bad. Jesus was this place, the Rock cleft for me..." Later on while suffering from edema in the hospital at Ravensbruck, Corrie wonders what if....and then remembers, "There are no 'ifs' in God's kingdom. I could hear her soft voice saying it. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in your will...."

This touching account is well worth reading, not only for the heroic efforts of the ten Booms, but more for the remarkable spiritual gems contained within.

To learn more about the ten Boom family The Corrie ten Boom House website (https://www.corrietenboom.com/en/family-ten-boom) has many interesting details.

ten Book family image: https://renovare.org/articles/this-too-is-in-his-hands

Book Details:

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Crossing Classics
228 pp.

The Magician of Auschwitz by Kathy Kacer, illustrated by Gillian Newland

The Magician of Auschwitz tells the story of  young Werner Reich who met a remarkable man while imprisoned by the Nazi's at Auschwitz. Werner was taken to a concentration camp called Terezin and then onto Auschwitz were he met  Herr Levin. Werner shared a bunk with Levin and struggled to survive the exhausting work on little food and sleep. One night the barracks was roused by the guards shouting at Levin to wake up. Once awake, they demanded he perform magic tricks for them. Levin spent hours that first night performing card tricks for the camp guards. Werner thought these tricks were wonderful and told Herr Levin that perhaps this would mean he would receive extra food. But Levin told Werner that the magic was likely the only thing preventing him from being shipped out to be killed. He would spend hours many nights entertaining the guards. 

One night weeks later, Werner, who was always hungry, hid a piece bread while he slept only to awake the next morning to discover it had been stolen from him. He was very very upset and was on the verge of giving up. But Herr Levin told him that he should not be too hard on the person who stole the break, telling him that this person was just trying to survive like everyone else.To ease his mind Herr Levin showed him one of his tricks and then taught Werner that trick. Herr Levin showed Werner that someone cared about him and that gave him hope. After surviving the concentration camp, Werner never lost his love of magic and did perform tricks.

After telling the magician's story through Werner Reich's eyes, there is a section titled How It Happened that tells who Herr Levin was and what happened to both him and Werner after the war. Herbert Levin was a famous magician who performed in Berlin. His stage name was Nivelli. Nivelli along with his wife and son were sent to Auschwitz where they eventually perished. Nivelli survived the camp and rebuilt his life as a magician, moving to the United States and eventually remarrying. There are plenty of photographs of Nivelli and also Werner Reich both as a young boy, with his sister Renate who also survived and as an older man. 

Where It Happened tells about Hitler coming to power in 1933 and how this led to the Jewish Holocaust and World War II.

The picture book portion is beautifully illustrated with Gillian Newland's watercolour paintings. Based in Toronto, Newland's artwork effectively captures some of the darkness of Auschwitz with the dark pallette of greys, whites, browns and blacks. At the same time she shows the humanity of the people in the camp. Kacer was introduced to the story of Nivelli the Magician by Jon Freund who also helped her contact Werner Reich.

Book Details:
The Magician of Auschwitz by Kathy Kacer, illustrated by Gillian Newland
Toronto: Second Story Press 2014

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Rose Justice has been flying planes since she was twelve years old, so it's no surprise that she has signed up to be part of the British Air Transport Auxiliary based out of Southampton, England. With the help of her Uncle Roger, Rose has managed to get through the red tape to work as a pilot flying new planes for the Royal Air Force to different bases in England and even overseas. It is 1944 and the Allied Invasion of Normandy has just happened a few months earlier. Rose feels lucky to be a part of the war effort and is glad she has so much flying experience prior to coming to England but she wants to go overseas.

Living in Hamble, Hampshire, Rose like everyone else in England, is trying to cope with the new V-1 bomb, pilotless planes that are bombs. These flying bombs are called vengeance weapons by the Germans, but the British give them all kinds of strange names including "doodlebugs". The bombs cause terror among the British because they can be heard thirty miles away. There is an eerie silence once the engine stops and then the bomb drops and explodes.

In September, 1944, Rose gets her wish, and arrives in Reims, France. Rose taxied someone important over to France and is taking a Spitfire back to Southampton when she encounters a flying bomb over Epernay, France. Knowing the terrible destruction these weapons cause, Rose decides to go after the bomb to take it down and while she succeeds, she is intercepted by German Luftwaffe who force her to turn around and fly deep into Germany.

When she lands in Germany, Rose is interrogated and then forced to fly to Neubrandeburg, a satellite camp for the infamous women's concentration camp, Ravensbruck. Conditions at the camp are dehumanizing and filthy, with the women starving.

After surviving the quarantine isolation, Rose is sent to work in the Siemens factory making the electrical relays for the V-1 bomb fuses. When she realizes what she is doing, Rose refuses to work anymore. This act of defiance gets her sent back to Ravensbruck where she is brutally beaten and placed in Block 32.

It is at this point she meets the "rabbits" as they are called - several of the Polish women who have been experimented on and are now crippled. Rose is completely horrified by what she learns; that seventy-four women have been experimented on and that these women are slated to be executed. Rose forms a friendship with petite, seventeen year old Roza Czajkowska, who was imprisoned when she was fourteen for working in the Polish resistance. When Rose meets these women they tell her that they have managed to get word outside the camp about what is going on. Rose tells Roza and others that she has heard about them on the BBC, but that everyone assumed this was anti-German propaganda because it was so unbelievable. Rose and several other women she meets, Karolina, Lisette and Irina, all work together to help one another survive the brutal roll calls and the death lists. They make Rose promise "to tell the world" if she survives.

Discussion

Rose Under Fire is a very powerful novel about one girl's experiences as a prisoner of war near the end of World War II. The novel is divided into three sections, Southampton, Ravensbruck, and Nuremburg. Rose narrates her experiences through each of these three phases.

In Southampton, Rose is an new pilot, fresh from America, young and inexperienced in the realities of war. Despite the bombs and devastation of London, Rose has yet to experience the effects of war on a deeply personal level. That changes in the second section of the novel.

In Ravensbruck, the story jumps ahead to April 17, 1945 and the reader knows that Rose is now in Paris. However, Rose is so traumatized by what happened to her that she cannot speak about it and instead writes everything in her journal. Wein makes use of flashbacks to have Rose tell her story and although not explicit, Wein does not shy away from portraying the details of camp life.

In Nuremberg, Rose struggles to recover from her experiences, to live a normal life, to come to terms with the loss of her friends at Ravensbruck, and to see justice done. She wants to find out what happened to her friends, Roza and Irina, whom she became separated from. She is afraid to tell the world, as she promised because she is so traumatized.

By separating Rose's story into these three sections, Wein does an excellent job demonstrating how Rose's experiences changed her forever.This is expressed through Rose's poetry which Wein places throughout the story. These poems are in fact the poetry of several poets including most notably,  Edna St. Vincent Millay, a famous American poet.

While the names of the "Rabbits" in this story are fictional, many other characters did exist including Dr. Leo Alexander, Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier, the four Polish women who testified at the Nuremburg Doctor's Trial as well as the doctors, Fritz Fischer, Karl Gebhardt, and Herta Oberheuser.

Wein effectively captures the brutality and horror of existing in Ravensbruck, while also portraying the humanity of those who suffered there. This is historical fiction at its best. The subject is heavy, but readers will come away with a deeper understanding of the true horror of the Nazi regime, the depths of suffering inflicted on all of Europe,  and the price our parents and grandparents paid to win the war.

Elizabeth Wein has a detailed bibliography at the back of her novel which provides both online and print resources. For those looking for further information on this historical event, the following websites may be of interest:

For more on Ravensbruck you can check out this Canadian website from the University of Toronto,  Ravensbruck, including information on the real seventy-four women who were the experimental subjects of SS Professor Karl Gebhardt: 74 Cases of Medical Experiments conducted on the Polish Political Prisoners in Women's Concentration Camp: http://individual.utoronto.ca/jarekg/Ravensbruck/index.html

The actual presentation by Dr. Leo Alexander can be found here: http://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=1961
This is a black and white video of this segment of the Nuremberg Doctor's Trial.

The Ravensbruck Memorial Site can be found at http://www.ravensbrueck.de/mgr/neu/english/index.htm