The House by the Lake; by Ella Carey.

The work is based on two true stories or rather facts, one in Paris of a grand demimondaine whose fantastic apartment came to light just before this was written, and another about a picture of a castle in Germany that related to past of a friend of the author.

This work could have been good, if only it did not try to keep the mid path skirting a light romance or rather two of them, an evocative journey, and a dive into a traumatic past, a past that was horrendous as hell for the world and a dive that is barely dipping toes out of a luxury yacht into a broiling ocean, that too in a safe space anchored in the yacht in a lounging chair by the swimming pool. As it is treads a border of what was disdainfully named mills and boon once and is now far more horribly called chic lit.

The tale alternates between two young women, one in 1934 in Paris who is taken to Geneva for a lake shore vacation by her demimondaine grandmother because in Paris the girl is unlikely to find a beau whose family will accept her, due to the grandma's past. The other is living in San Franisco in 2010, and it was her now 94 grandfather who was the beau the first young woman met in the hotel on lake shore and fell in love deeply with, mutually as it happened. Only, the young man was scion to a wealthy Prussian family, and was pressured to join his nation's new movement, which he was uncertain about.

Events unfold on both ends of the time as story alternates quick betwen the two time points, leaving the reader dizzy, trying to catch up which woman one is now proceeding with the story of. One is wondering if one young woman was related to the other, or to the young man she met in 2010. Until one is given a rather unsatisfactory out of wondering.

Unsatisfactory, because while the first story is about a very traumatic era, it skirts it with peeps out of the chocolate castle window that are no more than a word here or another there, and finally after finishing the book one is left with the impression the book was meant to indicate that the horrors of the time were not limited to the holocaust victims, but included those counted amongst the perpetrators or ones sitting on sides watching, approving or not. And while that contention is not fundamentally untrue, this pastry and chocolate platter can hardly give a picture of the reality of the horrors suffered by most people on either side.

Then again, perhaps it was an assignment in college that the advisor thought was worth publishing.

Essie's Roses

For a while, and in fact most of the time, this work gives a feeling of being an assignment for a school course, expanded into a full fledged novel and published because the mentor saw some spark, a bit more potential than in the routine work usually turned in. And unusually is, in many ways.

There is the unusual setting of a plantation before the civil war that works more like a place of respite and splendid solitude, in a forgotten corner if the South,  with women and girls of both races mixing and going about, men rarely present, and then not in a commanding position but either as romantic and supporting figures or as threatening and worse intruders. There is the father of one who turns out to be the father of the other as well, so the two half sisters born the same night are all but twins. There is the mutual love between the four women that is completely kosher, a delight in this day and age where it had begun to seem that not so kosher scenes with completely unnecessary descriptions were forced into otherwise delightful light reading, perhaps under the misconception that it helped sell.

And then the looming shadow of the doubt about whether the daughter,  the acknowledged one, was raped by her father, or merely brutalised,  not explicitly acknowledged until the end.

But the really delightful air is that of the lives and mindset of these various women who, while they not only aren't against men but do acknowledge love and need of it, still are subjects in their own lives and minds, not objects. This makes it one of the comparatively rare tales. The interplay of various factors re races with various facets of the relationshios and probkems explored,  is yet another delight.

And these make up a good deal towards  softening the raw, unformed writing. 

The Long Night: A True Story, by Ernst Israel Bornstein.

The title here refers, not to a special night on a personal scale, but one on an eternal scale, of time and world civilisation - not an earthly night, even a polar one, of either romance or horror or anything on a human scale, but one that descended on the earth from what one can only describe as pure hell, and not accidentally either, but with every intention and design of being wrought complete annihilation of human civilisation, by those that perpetrated it.

The Long Night is about the years of WWII.

If it is extremely hard to read this book, it is only because truth stares one in face the moment one begins reading, and it is neither exaggerated nor sparing, neither overdoing any emotion nor pretending a detachment except as experienced, and the author has simply documented what he went through, events and experiences and feelings and thought. And he writes sparingly at that, obviously - the wartime years of hell he and his people went through, with whole clans wiped out and subsequently either forgotten or advised forgotten for sake of forgiveness for the perpetrators, cannot be captured except a mere glimpse of, in a book of memoirs so small and spare as this one.

Somewhere in midst of reading it one realises with a shock that one knows this particular place he mentions, or that, and one passed it while driving on a holiday, never having any idea of what went on there. Most with any idea of history of past century do know about the half a dozen or so most known concentration camps used in killing over six million Jews and several million others, at least the names, but there were dozen more if not two, three or more dozen.

It isn't that nobody else went through such tortures, humiliations, massacres. It is more that this was so deliberately intended to extinguish a whole civilisation, a section of humanity. That too isn't uncommon in history, but all the more why one recognises the whole hell. One doesn't need to compare if one knew a hell worse, one simply knows in one's heart how it is to be subjected to it, and one is able to identify with the story.

And yet, there are details unimaginable that one recoils from, with all the more horror at what the author and his people went through.

After one is finished reading the main part it is necessary to read the several appendices and understand, if one doesn't already, why it is necessary to keep this knowledge, this memory of this history, alive, and why it is a horrible idea - usually preached by all the seeming or so called liberals - to forgive and forget the perpetrators and move on. One can forgive the victims for not wanting to relive such horrors and for wanting to forget them, but that is a different story from the doctrine of forgiving all such crimes that are perpetrated with every intention of wreaking hell on the victims.

The Burning Spear; by John Galsworthy:-

One gets used to a certain pattern in reading an author's works, and generally Galsworthy is no exception to that - a reader reasonably begins to expect a diffused albeit not hidden description of beauty of England through his works, apart from questions of social status, English caste system, status of women, and more. His women are perhaps not strident in speaking but very eloquent in silently standing up for themselves and their rights not yet granted them by society. His upper caste isn't the caricature of a leftist author that whips the lower ones or starves them, but rather people who have an idea of noblesse oblige that they were brought up to or those not yet quite there.

And then one arrives at this work, a different one! Who knew Galsworthy could write a book to match a P.G. Wodehouse work in being so hilarious!

This one is difficult to describe in that it is like a one person play on stage where the artist is portraying everything ridiculous about various things one normally sees the humour of privately but suffers publicly, not because these things are always ridiculous but because often enough they are the scarecrows rather than valiant figures one is naturally inclined to revere. Duty to country, war, patriotism, roles of upper castes as defined in England and Europe in guiding the lower classes, and more than anything else, speeches and articles, are all out there held up to a mirror with the figure of a sincere but clueless man of upper classes out to do his bit in every way he can think of. The only other author who could and did hold up such a mirror was George Bernard Shaw, and he did it through various plays of his.

Not that any of these virtues are less than noble, but that lacking thought and perspective, those indulging in attempts do become a bit ridiculous. Not as much as the protagonist here, of course, who is a flawless stream of hilarious attempts to go from one effort to other and next in his quest to be of use during war and do his duty, while really being unaware of just how comic and more he is.

The House in Prague - How a Stolen House Helped an Immigrant Girl Find Her Way Home, by Anna Nessy Perlberg.

Reading any memoirs of the holocaust, or for that matter a book based on those times and those events, is hard enough. This one is by someone who was a little girl of ten by the time the horrors began, and the book begins with memories of the home of the family in Prague by the little girl, albeit written and published much later. The memories are of a beautiful life in a beautiful home, a large house on the hill in Prague, filled with music and more, with wealth of the educated, accomplished  and the connoisseur, rather than  wealth of the aristocracy which may or may not exercise their choice of ability to accrue all those qualities. The family moreover is of a mixed marriage, with a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, with much love and complete harmony.

This somehow makes for more horror for the reader who knows and dreads the subsequent events that will affect this family, their beautiful home and beautiful life filled with music, concerts, friends and family. Fortunately this family survived, by selling much of their prized possessions or using some to bribe whoever needed to be, to emigrate on the eve of the horrors descending on the world, centred on the continent. They managed to survive, do well, educate the children well, and live, in US.

But this only makes for a contrast when viewed in context of the family and friends and more that were lost due to not being able to, or in some cases, not choosing to, migrate as they did. A very moving moment is when the author, then still a young girl coping with high school in the new land, is asked by her father to accompany him to a synagogue for the first time - she is brought up Catholic - and mentions how the Rabbi asked if anyone lost a family member in the holocaust. She raises her hand, and looks around to see the whole congregation doing the same. They rise, sing prayers for the dead, all weeping.

It's a tale of life, survival and prospering of a few on the background of the six million or more that did not, and as such all the more poignant - for, obviously, if these people did so well, so could a large part of those that did not survive, and this loss of human potential and of quality was all because the lumpen that the perpetrated the events intended to wipe out human civilisation and all its achievements, in name of racial supremacy.

That another ideology in name of equality of all did much the same to a large proportion of the world population behind respective curtains of the totalitarian nations, only makes it worse. One is, of course, happy these good people did survive and did well.

Man without a shadow: The Jew who would not be caught; by Ernst J. Taussig, Peter Elyakim Taussig (Translator)

For those familiar more with western or in general an English speaking part or parts of the globe, these memoirs now coming forth from the Holocaust victims of central and eastern Europe are a vital reminder of just how different the world is, even so close to what one is familiar with, and yet how humanity isn't different. Most of us have our information about the events related to the WWII through books and films and television related to the allied forces, mostly. These memoirs serve to fill in a vital gap therein, and tell us about the parts of Europe that remained under occupation of forces from one side or another for a long, long time.

Taussig wrote this for his own family, but his son rightly thought it was of interest in general, and translated it from the original German with its very flowery ornate language and style. As such it seems a bit dated and stilted to readers used to more plain style of writing, instead of one where the author is constantly turning to address the reader. But that is a minor inconvenience in reading what is a memoir with astonishing details and twists and turns.

Taussig survived the holocaust mainly by hiding and running, as many others did, albeit a minuscule proportion in comparison with those that did not. The details of that hiding involve a number of helpers who hid and fed him and his family, and helped them keep in touch. They in turn needed help when it was all over, which Taussig went to lengths to make sure they got, by insisting officials take notice of how they were helpful in his and his family's survival.

The aftermath of the war is surprisingly just as interesting, as is the part when they managed finally to escape to Israel and found it wasn't easy there either, and had to begin struggle all over, repeatedly. The honesty and openness of this account is breathtaking in this respect.

A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography; by Diana Mitford Mosley.

Looking at the cover photograph, one is slightly puzzled, is this the face the author repeatedly claims was painted by quite so many of the supposedly top artists of the day? One could explain that with her being of the top echelons of the society (- she claims they were brought up poor, but they do seem to move from one large country home to another, have seasons in London and holidays in France and Italy, while her father went on buying house after house; her first husband was a Guinness, and she says she did not know they were rich until she wanted a diamond tiara and he casually told her she has one somewhere around; she married another aristocrat, having divorced Guinness somewhere shortly before or after his father was Lord Moyne; and one of her sisters was married to Andrew Cavendish, who inherited Duchy of Devonshire due to the death of his elder brother in the war after his wedding to Cathleen "Kick" Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy) - this would be not too unlikely for a young woman of some attraction, but one keeps wondering what it is one sees in the face, for it isn't beauty. 

Then somewhere at a quiet moment it comes to one, as things seem to - this is the face that literally illustrates in one's mind the actress who was paramour of the artist in an Agatha Christie work, about the artist dying as he painted the young woman. One of the most thrilling and satisfactory works of Agatha Christie, one wonders if she wrote it having seen this face, else it is too much of a coincidence this face fits that description quite so much, quite so well. 

Even a reviewer of this work mustn't spoil so good a story as the particular work of Agatha Christie, for the reader who has not yet read it, but the character fits. This woman would not allow anything to stand in her way. And her fury is vented in this on not only communists and labour governments, but on Churchill - "cousin Winston" - whom she equates incredibly with Hitler whom she admired and loved, and on British in general unless they are the specific or nameless that stood by the fascist party Mosley founded and headed, She equates US and USSR as powers equally abominable in being outsiders in Europe and meddling by dividing it, and if this is not enough, takes care to quote someone who called the three allied leaders at Yalta "two pigs and a boar" - and just in case one did not get who is who, explains that boar was Stalin.  

If one is not repulsed when reading this book and through the chapters about fascist or nazi figures of the era, if one is not revolted to the very core and at an almost physical bordering nausea when reading the blinkered and entitled rich author's vituperation poured against those opposing the fascists, then one ought to examine one's own thinking, for one can safely bet one is a fascist. 

Proliferation of evil is of course helped by active participation, voluntary subscription et al, but one of the vital components of the proliferation and victory is the standoff by those that could but don't oppose it, not because they lack force or any other reason, but only because they would rather not lose their privileges and the good life due to such opposition. So they not only watch as the neighbourhood bully bashes up the weak and the not so weak of the neighbourhood but manages to have others shut their doors and windows tight, and then the once famous moral tale of the fascist era comes to life. It goes something like this - when they came for communists, I was silent, because I was not a communist; when they came for socialists, Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, I stayed silent; when they came for me, there was no one left to protest! 

US was late in joining the struggle against the fascist threat looming against human civilisation, because the so called isolationists were dominant in not only industry and media but generally the people too, since English had won the language battle by only a small margin, and a sizeable chunk in Midwest was German origin. If it were not for Japan attacking US, what would be the state of the world today is an unthinkable horror to imagine. 

In England the situation was less opaque, and those in sympathy with not Germany as such but far more specifically the then nazi regime of Germany, called themselves fascists - and the chairman and more, its establishing member and its spirit, was Oswald Mosley, and upper caste member of the aristocracy of Great Britain, who was son in law of the ex Viceroy of India Lord Curzon. This book is the work of his second wife, who is a shadowy figure in the biography of daughters of Curzon, The Viceroy's Daughters. There, she is the catalyst for the heartbreak and death of the beloved second daughter of Curzon, and known for her trysts with the married father of several children whom she married in secret after Cimmie Curzon Mosley died. 

When one is not a fascist, nor tolerant of the ideology therein or any form of totalitarian dictatorship, and if one is aware of the era when fascism almost destroyed human civilisation and all achievements thereof via an avowed aim of conquest of the world and enslavement of all people of not one particular race - when one is aware of the important events and persona of the first half of the twentieth century, in short, one is in quandary about this book. One does not wish to have discrimination based on a prejudice even if it is about a figure that belongs more on the society pages among shenanigans of the upper castes of the world that frolic unscathed by poverty or even any of slightest limitations to their fun by economy, and only connected to one of the worst known fascists of Great Britain via an affair, one that culminated in marriage only via her divorce from the young upper caste father of her two sons and death of her paramour's wife - mother of his very young brood of more than two - due chiefly to heartbreak. 

But if one puts aside one's fear of disliking this on basis of one's horror of fascism or one's sympathy for the sweet unfortunate Cimmie, and one goes on to read it, one is in for a horror only macthed perhaps by the horrors in Milton's description of hell. No, Diana Mitford does not describe concentration camps of Germany or even the million starved to death in India by the British when they took away the harvests for British soldiers and left the poor peasants of India starving with news thereof muzzled by force of the empire. She in fact frolics about from house to house, city to city, with fun and food and parties and more, dresses and music and adoration by various persona of the era - including, chiefly perhaps, by the nazi supremo. 

No, the horror is that she - after a careful denunciation of the holocaust once or twice, to cover - questions British for going to war, blames them for doing so for a distant Poland that did not matter to British Empire, and in the process causing the destruction of the Empire, thereby causing England to reduce from a world girdling empire to a small nation without power even in Europe - and she heaps this blame on British, mostly, with scarce a finger of blame pointed at the fascist powers for causing the war in the first place. 

No, in her book their - the then German regime's - leader could do no wrong, because he was nice to her and her sister, and if he wanted to occupy all of Europe, British should not have bothered until he attacked the British Empire. Along this argument, she not only disparages the British government and her "Cousin Winston" in particular, but equates him in a separate chapter with his opponent, comparing point by point, and goes to the length of disparaging the men who fought for the allies - although not a word about the men who went to war to conquer the world for their leader of Germans, attacking nation after nation and massacring chiefly civilians in an effort to wipe Europe clean of all others so that Germans could have "living room".  

But when she asserts, quoting Mosley, that this position of theirs was because British empire was in jeopardy if British went to war with Germany, and that definitely what Britain should not have gone to war for was for a "distant" central or east European nation, unless British empire was attacked directly by Germany, and that Mosley personally too would have gone to war against Germany if the British empire were in fact in danger due to Germany attacking it directly - one wonders what geometry, what measurements they have been taught, in school or at home! Hallo, isn't central and eastern Europe closer to London, to all of mainland Britain, than most of the dominions and colonies, perhaps with exception of Hebrides or Channel islands, which should count among mainland Britain anyway?

She is as completely a nazi as the top echelons of Germany accused at Nuremberg trials, and she blames the allies for being unfair at the said trials for not accusing a single non German even for seeming fairness of the trials. She is scathing about suspension of her freedom of speech, and being sent to prison during war for being not only an outspoken fascist but a personal friend of Hitler amongst others in her family - her sisters, Mosley - and more, but is completely obliterating in her own mind or is being hypocritical about such rights being suspended in Germany even during the years she was visiting the country and its top echelon leaders personally. 

To be fair she seems to have an inkling that those rights, even right to life, were not allowed the colonial subjects of British empire, and seems to be fine with it, which is usually called racism. This she does not mention much less discuss, but does at one point say she was disapproving of a European friend being bad to an Indian he brought to the party with him - so presumably she is ok with Dyer killing hundreds of civilians in India at Jalianwala where a tank was positioned at the single gate of the enclosed garden by him while all those enjoying a quiet time en famille in the garden were shot dead, men and women, babies and old. 

She manages to quote repeatedly in favour of Mosley, and for someone unfamiliar with the era it might seem that it was surprising Mosley was not carried to the British Parliament or even the Buckingham Palace on shoulders of the countrywide adoration of the people of the country. Fact is, people were fond of their king who abdicated, but adjusted placidly to his leaving the country, and Mosley's popularity was not a thousandth if that of the ex king. The two couples were neighbours in France for a while until the Duke of Windsor died, and friends, unsurprisingly, given their state of exile due to their nazi sympathies albeit carefully covered with protestations of loyalty to their country they found it difficult to share travails of.

When not doing this defence of fascism and fascists of the era, and attacking all others, the woman brought up privileged and never brought out of blinkers of entitlement gives endless descriptions of places, food and personages she encountered across the continent and in the isles - it gets repetitive and bores one after a while, and one is anxious to finish the book only because when something is so repulsive, one wishes to be fair and see if there is a saving grace. But through almost nine tenths of it, no there isn't. The author does not even mention the first Lady Mosley - or was she not titled because he was not yet? - more than about twice, and one wonders, was she unaware her husband's and his children's upkeep was only due to Curzon wealth, including the share of the eldest daughter who took care of the children, or does this Lady Mosley take it for granted she deserved it just as she takes it for granted Poland should not have been gone to war for by the British and the French? 

At some point one begins to wonder if one takes for granted a logical mind, a fair sense of justice and a good heart, and these are in fact not so obviously seen by everyone as a necessity, not at heart although much of the time they are paid lip service to. The second Lady Mosley is less bothered about paying such lip service, at that, and thinks - no, in fact demands as an obvious right - her privileges above the rest. 

And necessarily thereby one is reminded of Galsworthy's portrayal of the British and their upper caste, and their creed of noblesse oblige, of an obligation to give life to public service for the country and even humanity, since they have had their livelihoods provided for unlike most of the rest.One reads his beautiful portrayals of England's landscape and seasons, and the creeds and thinking people live by. It is not merely mesmerising one into tranquillity, it is very reassuring too - and even though one knows that the world isn't as tranquil, as beautiful, one finds it soothing to let that portrayal be a corner of the world in one's mind. 

And then one reads about this life, from this woman, and one wonders, just how many of the said upper caste are in fact brought up to live with this creed of noblesse oblige, of devoting the privileged life to public service, rather than not only living a circuit of party - holiday - townhouse season - country house summer - riviera and so on, but espousing it at the expense of the poor, the whole world? She would call this communism, but it is no more so than the Galsworthy characters who would be scandalised at such a thought. 

Broken Angels; by Gemma Liviero.

No matter how much one reads about holocaust, one can never really be prepared for the next account of victims who went through that time, and this book is no exception. Broken Angels makes no claim of being a historic account, but then far too many characters are so very individualistic in their characters, their lives, the events, that it couldn't be all fiction - and the horrors one experiences as one reads it are all too real.

This story brings together an unlikely assortment of people in their travails of that time, but then Europe was in so much turmoil, with people being forced out of their homes willy-nilly, either fleeing the invading armies or being forced into ghettos, that this unlikely people coming together isn't all that unique, by itself. Only, here the coming together is of people who are victims to begin with, of various completely diverse backgrounds, who then proceed to save one another in ways none of them thought of until it happens.

The so called "ethnic German" children, of migrated or settled elsewhere German ancestors, were often taken from their homes, to be Germanised in Germany in centres created for the purpose, with training in language and more, thereafter to be adopted or otherwise possibly integrated in German mainstream, all provided if they had the desirable physical characters to begin with - not merely in terms of colourings of skin, eyes and hair, but strict measurements of various physical characteristics according to the then German idea of what constituted Aryan.

In reality the word Arya, pronounced Aarya, is from India, of Sanskrit language, and has nothing whatsoever to do with physical characteristics used in Germany, much less any physical colouring, but is about a level of civilisation of one's inner being, of mind and soul and code of conduct. The word is related to Light, and is about a person enlightened a minimal level in one's persona and conduct.

This taking children of Germanic ancestors from occupied territories by force was not supposed to be, but turned necessarily into, the children being not only traumatised due to the basic separation from their parents but also often enough due to sadistic tendencies of the adults in charge, and one of the protagonists of the tale here is just such a child, a very intelligent one who undergoes the worst attempts of a very sadistic official to break her, until she is almost deported to a camp, obviously meant to be killed.

She is saved by a very unlikely person, that is, unlikely in eyes of other people around - or else he might not have succeeded - but by that time one whom the reader is pinning a desperate hope on, about saving this and other children of that centre. This is a doctor whose father is a high up nazi official, personal friend of of a top nazi, and while he has suffered greatly in his depth due to nature of work he is supposed to carry out, and he isn't quite secret in his being not in sync with the regime, he is trying by this point in the story to seemingly comply just so he can save someone whom he has already rescued from a ghetto and a camp from certain death.

Those are the other two protagonists - the German doctor, and the young woman he saves, a teenage victim in Poland who has seen the changes in life of her family from relatively well off to destitution and starvation of ghetto, the travails of her mother subjected to various guards of the ghetto after the father is taken away, the little sister who has to be hidden lest she be sent to death, and more.

By the time Willem saves Elsi, she has lost all her family, and this unexpected turn of events of his saving her brings the two back to life in more ways than one. How the two go on to save the children of the centre where he has accepted a posting, and the tale of survival of the various people post the war, is the rest of the story.

And if this isn't a real story about real people, one has to wonder just how great a writer this author is!

One Step Ahead; by Avraham Azrieli.

One step ahead, the title, is clear in the context of the holocaust perpetrated with full intention during WWII by the nazi regime across all of occupied Europe, and chiefly in the eastern sector.

This is the story of a family that fled across border to east for reasons not then clear to them, but fleeing the advancing German forces that not only had no compunction firing and bombing aimed at fleeing poor civilians in wagons or on foot, women, children, old or sick, but in all probability were ordered to do so too and used not only infantry and artillery but their vastly modern air force too, for this purpose.

This family fled their home and town Skalat, at the then border of Poland and Ukraine, escaping the death that overtook the hundreds on road alongside, often by inches, and survived this and much more. And it took most of the time span of this escape for them to realise they were fortunate to have left, for no one of their families or friends back home had survived!

Priceless reading, even when one is familiar with the general holocaust picture of events that took place.

Last Train to Istanbul; by Ayşe Kulin.

A general reader not that steeped in history is aware of the general story of WWII as in the broad strokes etched in films and literature generally, which tells more about the west, some about Russian, and very little about how the war affected the smaller nations caught willy nilly in the conflict that killed millions in war and genocide. From Scandinavia to Poland to Central European smaller nations to Balkan theater, people were affected in ways that left little hope or escape for them - and of these the role of Turkey isn't much known. This story fills in some of the gaps, although it uses historic facts to tell about characters not claimed here to be historical. Which is no deterrent to the learning of history of the time and place, and about what people went through.

Turkey had sided with Germany in WWI, and since become a republic; the nation had been broken into over half a dozen parts since, from a claim to landmass covering from central Asia to Egypt and Arabia, to a small rectangle across the straits that divided Asia from Europe. Turkey was desperately trying to retain its dual character then as now, to keep the best of east and west as people saw fit, and too to keep neutral in the war. This last was not that easy, with both sides pressuring her to join them, but neither promising help in actually fighting, in terms of weapons and ammunitions.

The story here is about people navigating the safety of their lives while France is occupied, and the people who had taken residence or citizenship in France for one reason or another having to escape again to Turkey.

For Turkey took the position that she did not discriminate its citizens on basis of faith or race, and must and shall save all she can, despite German insistence about extermination of all Jews.

Turkey had officials in place in France who arranged for a carriage to take such people from Paris to Istanbul, and the tale gravitates towards this event, while relating the personal stories of various characters and the history of Jewish diaspora in Turkey that were refugees from Spain when in 1492 the supposedly just and fair couple, Ferdinand and Isabella, expelled them and ordered them executed if not gone, and furthermore ordered them to liquidate their properties in Spain and leave the money, gold and all else behind.

Turkey had then specifically invited them to come to Turkey, where they lived in peace and prospered, until the turn of century when many relocated to France. They had kept their language, cuisine and so on as they had brought it from Spain, and found a cultural resonance in France. Until the German occupation.

This story is about the train journey of those people, returning from France to Turkey.

For those unaware about the general widespread nature of colourful variety of eyes and hair outside Europe, perhaps there are surprises. For those more aware of the world and that light coloured hair and eyes are not unknown, even relatively less infrequent than thought in Europe or US, through Asia albeit not far east, - not that much surprise in that respect.

End of a Berlin Diary; by William L. Shirer

William Shirer's definitive Rise And Fall of Third Reich was so very well known, so unquestionably acknowledged to be THE book to read on the topic if one were to read just one, that one sort of postponed it when reading other stuff on the topic - after all, the horrors of the second world war, especially the genocide related ones, are precisely what a young person aware of the general history would not go into, for fear of drowning in the then recent past, who knows with what result! So instead one read other books of his, such as Nightmare Years, with unexpected benefits of discovery.

This book, one that a reader picks up naturally after reading his Berlin Diary, is unexpected in a different direction - where one expects him to pick up where he left off his Berlin sojourn in the previous book, and relate the horrors of devastation Germany in general and Berlin in particular went through, which was not trivial at all, he gives that in short too, but much, much more. This too being a diary, one goes with him on his travels as a journalist and reporter while he attend to the important, the very significant events of that year. And that was a lot.

What's more he gives much of the various speeches and documents of importance, from those related to events such as early and unexpected demise of Roosevelt, to the birth of UN and its charter set forth amidst struggles by allies with their conflicting agenda - and these conflicts, as one knows, grew only worse as far as the two powerful nations across the north pole, US and USSR, went.

Shirer, the seasoned and by then cosmopolitan albeit very American, gives an unexpected view in that he sees the various bumbling US personnel as a bit crude, less aware and more impatient to get home, than the patient, suave, knowledgeable counterparts in Europe, particularly USSR. Perhaps this is what earned him the subsequent wrath of his nations' authorities in the McCarthy era, from which he rose with his stupendous definitive work he is known for.

One should count oneself fortunate if one reads this, although it does include some documents horrific - he gives a very small selection of what documents were discovered when allies found the fourteen hundred tons of meticulously documented details of everything nazis had done, decided, and so forth, penned with typical Teutonic thoroughness as Shirer points out.

But even more fortunate one feels is about reading this book not only for its documents quoted but for the comments by its author, the sensitive and intelligent person whose awareness of the world went far beyond his limits of selfish interests - he and a few others such as he (FDR, Upton Sinclair come to mind, among those known generally) guided humanity into the illuminated path of thinking that has been generally acknowledged as the high road since, despite the not quite gone totalitarians including nazis who were not only able to take refuge in various countries around the world but actively sought out by likes of Peron of Argentina and Stroessner of Paraguay, for their preferences lay with the racist and fascist ideology.

Shirer writes about the allies marching in, battling their way into Germany, about death of Roosevelt and the reaction of the then still battling Germans who rejoiced with the impression that they had been granted a reprieve, about the birth of UN and about US insisting - despite USSR opposition - on inclusion of a very fascist Argentina that was an ally of Germany, about Berlin destroyed (and its residents, like other Germans too, upset with their leaders then only about the losing the war, not about having started it or having caused destruction and havoc and genocides that affected others), and about the Nuremberg Trials that - again - the residents of the city and others across Germany then took as theater by victors punishing the losers. About the horrendous facts that came out with documents that showed intention and plans by the nazis, and more.

If only these works by Shirer were prescribed reading for schools, students would graduate and arrive at colleges far better educated than they have for the better part of century past.

Wallenberg - Missing Hero: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest; by Kati Marton.

The title is indeed apt, Raoul Wallenberg's is the story that refutes all cynicism and reminds one that virtues such as selfless nobility of soul and character is not imaginary, it can and does exist in this very world that would often enough make one believe to the contrary - and for the latter tendency there is good reason! People, masses, or individuals without hope are easier to control, to use in service of any vicious act and plan at all. But then there are the rare souls such as Raoul Wallenberg who appear like comets on the scene and leave a trail of light, disproving the cynic and vicious thesis that would have the civilisation give up hope and humanity. And however much the adverse forces attempt to extinguish these noble agents of Divine, they leave an unmistakable, unshakeable trail of light that is forever. They are not to be forgotten, ever.

Simon Wiesenthal has said and truly enough, that there were no heroes in the WWII except Raoul Wallenberg. Perhaps there were numerous others that acted nobly enough in helping and saving lives of many others, whether singly or many, and those are not to be discounted or disparaged, either.

But Raoul Wallenberg's efforts and actions ended up saving lives of Jews of Budapest to the tune of a hundred thousand, directly and indirectly - he brought back hundreds from the deportation trains and walks, he gave out "shutzpasses" by thousands proclaiming a holder of such a pass protected by Sweden and in effect immediately a citizen of Sweden, gave hope to many more who took action for themselves and others as a result, and guidance by example that resulted in Swiss and other nations' diplomatic services in Hungary following examples and issuing similar passes; he went about bribing and intimidating those he could, writing letters to those that would be affected by officialdom, and generally thwarting the efforts of those that would wipe out all Jews from Budapest as they had managed (or so they thought) to do to Jews of most of Europe.

Eichmann is known more than Raoul Wallenberg, for the former was in charge of the implementation of the "final solution" as was decided at a meeting in Wannsee in 1942, and was thereby changed from a nazi who believed in Zionism to one who methodically went about the extermination that replaced the deportation to Palestine as a scheme, with complete determination to achieve a hundred percent "Judenfrei" Europe. He claimed at a conversation with Wallenberg that he did not care for his personal safety, but subsequently very much did, went into hiding in Europe and then in Argentina, and was hunted out only due to patient, painstaking efforts of those who would not allow such criminals to go scot free - and became famous over the world because of his being brought to justice.

But Raoul Wallenberg was the unexpected glitch in the nazi scheme of turning the humanity into a scenario of demons and victims, former without humanity and latter without hope, and the two acted opposed to each other for the short duration of few months that Wallenberg was in Budapest. That Raoul Wallenberg won in saving quite so many is what is marvellous not only for those he saved but for humanity as such, in not allowing the forces of dark in extinguishing Light from earth.

All the more tragic and horrible, therefore, what happened to him just as Europe was liberated - Soviet military took him in custody and transported him to Moscow to be thrown in prison, and shunted across the Gulag from one prison to another, forever denying his very existence with one lie or another. And this was partly because they did not believe anyone could be selfless or noble, so they took him for - of all the idiotic accusations - a nazi agent!

His clan in Sweden, Wallenberg, which is to Sweden what Rockefellers and Rothschilds are in US, UK et al, moreover, did not help either, any more that the Swedish government did, for the first decade or two - and by then it was too late, and Soviets were embroiled in their own lie that was preserved by successive regimes for sake of not admitting mistakes!

Fortunately, there were others, apart from his immediate family - his mother, stepfather, and half brother and half sister - who were not quite as willing to let him perish forgotten, and their efforts went into taking note of every person who came out of Russia having been in prison and being aware of or having met Raoul Wallenberg. This went on till '79, that is, he was seen or heard of last then, albeit the news came out later.

It is almost as if the hero with the shining noble soul who saved a hundred thousand from forces of evil was taken by the forces of darkness in revenge. One cannot help but admire him and weep at heart over this person, and yet be grateful that he existed, not only for the sake of those he saved - Budapest had about a hundred thousand surviving Jews despite Eichmann's personal and very determined efforts to wipe them all out - but for the sake of human civilisation, of very humanity.

The author has done a good job of recording his story, although by now more is known and can be found in other books. For example a detail about his incarceration from "The Nazi Hunter" that specifies that it was the then Major General Brezhnev who was responsible for the incarceration of Raoul Wallenberg - which is on par with the rest of the story and its ironies, tragedies.

For, unlike their perpetrators who were lumpen cadre whether of nazis or bolsheviks, both Simon Wiesenthal and Raoul Wallenberg in particular and a major part of the victims of holocaust in general were educated, refined people. This pattern alone goes to show the play that the whole era was, of the forces of darkness attempting to extinguish any Light from civilisation and humanity, if such evidence is required at all.

Berlin Diary 1933-41: The Rise of the Third Reich; by William L. Shirer

Often enough when reading this, and the preceding Start, Shirer reminds one of the World's End series of the incomparable Upton Sinclair, they are so synchronised in their thinking and their mindset, but of course that is not to say they plagiarised - only that either both had the same spirit in viewing that era and probably pretty much most of what they saw through their lives, and perhaps they knew one another, spoke, corresponded, or at least read works of one another. The last alone would not of course bring about the similarities in writing to the extent that a shadow of one is visible to the mind's eye as one reads the other, it has to be a synchronicity of mind and spirit, at least in viewing the era around the two world wars and perhaps more too.

To anyone interested in that era, the first half of the twentieth century with its momentous events changing future of humanity, works of these writers are invaluable. And while Upton Sinclair writes in a novel form, Shirer published his diaries of the time, and memoirs, which are practically a small camera making one see it through his view. And this, Berlin Diary of the early years of the WWII, which began formally only in 1939 but of course was set in course to begin far earlier, is perhaps the most important witness account from someone who was neither a victim nor a perpetrator but an impartial observer.

Most of the diary consists of Shirer's everyday accounts of the happenings of what he saw, what he went through, but towards the end when he is set to leave Berlin to return home, he sets out his thoughts and analysis of the whole experience, of all he saw and more, and this provides a great insight to both the man that the author was even so young, and the times he lived in. For few then saw it quite as clearly as he did, most being affected by either fear or apathy, or selfish interests or even being willingly fooled or charmed by the nazis and their agents that worked hard enough to make that happen. Perhaps there were more such men who were not fooled, and a few names come to mind - F.D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others of British who were not pro nazi, Upton Sinclair - but the rest of the world was only made aware of just how evil the nazi ideology and rule was when at the end of the war the discoveries of the camps revolted and horrified the world for ever.

It is hard to imagine now anyone being fooled quite as much as most of the civilised world then was by the facade, but perhaps that is just as much an illusion - racism, anti-semitism and other forms thereof including of course, hugely, misogyny, pervades the world, still pretty much, so much so most people are unaware of just how much they are confused about it all. Some confuse nationalism with nazi ideology just because of the name, others claim equality is about all women being equal (which is convenient for those that would deny equality to women and leave status quo re male domination intact, of course), and more.

All the more then, one needs to not forget that era when civilisation came close to perishing, and survived only by a miracle or more; one needs to know about what people went through, what they saw, what they experienced living in Europe during those years.

The Last Jews in Berlin; by Leonard Gross.

As the author mentions at the beginning, Berlin had over 160,000 Jews before the nazi assault on their existence began through not only Germany but subsequently in most of Europe occupied by German forces. At the end, when Berlin fell, the Jewish estimate was of 1,123 Jewish survivors in Berlin.

Thousands were deported out of Germany, including Berlin, supposedly for resettlement "east" as the nation was told, but in reality to camps on the way to total extinction, with facilities arranged for the purposes not only of massacre but of complete disposal of bodies, for example bones ground into fertiliser for German fields and soaps made out of rest. Few survived this, in comparison, but they did, miraculously and with help of Germans and others - notably Church of Sweden and its officials in Berlin - who did not agree with the official policy and helped out of not only decency but enormous courage in face of the dangers to their own selves and their families.

On the other hand there were those that were unexpected in either getting them caught, especially the Jews used by Gestapo for catching the Jews in hiding in Berlin, in Germany and elsewhere in occupied regions, with fear for their own selves and families being the hook that was used to make them do this work for the Gestapo.

This book gives detailed stories of such survival of some half a dozen of Jews of Berlin, how they lived day to day, often without shelter, and starvation being a part of life, but for most part in hiding with help of their friends, colleagues, and so on. One such courageous person helping them, Perwe, the pastor of the Church of Sweden in Berlin, helped hundreds, including getting some of them out of Germany and safe to Sweden, until he flew to Sweden for a routine trip and his plane crashed - which most of his colleagues took as murder by Gestapo due to their knowledge of what he was planning further to arrange for helping a lot more escape to Sweden. Considering SS and generally Gestapo were executing all able bodied males not in war as deserters, this is not beyond possibilities.

There are moments of unexpected smile brought to reader, such as when one such surviving male was able to prove he was indeed a Jew, the Russian soldier he was facing offered him a selection of expensive watches and gave a gold watch. There are moments of unexpected horror and worse, such as when it was a gang of Russian soldiers that raped a barely teenage girl who was Russian and helped by a German woman in survival (those soldiers were promptly executed when her German adopted mother, Countess Matzlan, brought a Russian officer to rescue her). And of course, there are moments of heart touching tales, such as the German couple that began by giving a few nights sanctuary to a Jewish couple and ended up being with them for few years till the arrival of Russians - not only them but later with parents of one of them too.

All in all, certainly worth reading.

The Girl from Krakow; by Alex Rosenberg.

The book is published with not only a declaration that it is a novel, but with a much more explicit declaration on the page with publication details, to the effect that every name and event and detail in the book is a fiction and has no similarity to anything in life or fact - which parodies all such declarations so hugely, so without any shred of either subtlety to the parody or likelihood to any shred of truth left possible in the declaration itself, that one begins to wonder just how factual the story is after all. The author is mentioned as born along with his twin brother in Vienna in '46, just as the ending chapter describes the twins born to the protagonist, and one has to wonder, is the story after all a collage of true stories of survivors of the Holocaust, and not just a story woven to incorporate the various details of the era, of the war in Spain and then occupation of Poland by Germany and Soviet Russia in turns, and the war crimes and the various people who lived in that turmoil?

Rosenberg offers an astonishing amount of detail of those events in so short a book that is after all a story of survival of two people in mostly very separate places, and a good deal of what can only be his own conclusions of philosophy and life from reading various philosophies he mentions and having learned of the events and details of the era. His conclusions and his thinking about it all, though, is so nihilistic, one wonders if it is due to the same reason it is of many Germans who have understood the era and the failure of every philosophy given them, by church and by nazis subsequently, until Germany was left alone ashamed while those that propounded the philosophies were unscathed, whether escaped or still power through the world.

The book is very gripping, difficult to put down, as it tells of a young Rita Feuherstal who searched her self as a young student and insisted on being sent to school, then to faculty of law for studies at Krakow university, at the beginning of it all, and how she lived through the war years and escaped from place to place, from Karpatyn where she lived with her little son Stephan and her husband, Doctor Urs Guildenstern, to the ghetto after the husband had joined medical corps services in Russia and her region was occupied by Germany, and further.

Rita was persuaded by her friends in the ghetto to allow her son to be saved by their contacts, which results in an uncertainty and anguish since the whole time and region is uncertain about anyone's survival, and she keeps on searching for him in midst of her flights from one place to another, always returning to places dangerous for her own survival for sake of trying to find him. She meanwhile is fleeing the persecution and certain death, via new identity and temporary shelters provided by helping volunteers, from Karpatyn to Warsaw to Krakow to Heidelberg and back to Poland under Russian occupation post war to look for her son. She works in various places, meets various people, and the story takes us across a whole spectrum of variety of people in their beliefs and behaviours, their nationalities and their actions during the time.

The author manages to bring in a lot of lesser known atrocities, such as the extortion gangs operating during the German occupation of Warsaw, including a few Jewish gangs; the extermination of Polish officers by Soviet military under orders; the deportation of Crimean Tartars and others to places east such as Kazakhastan; and more. The sheer detail of how much he gives in terms of events and people is overwhelming, even before he expounds the philosophy of it all being diseases in process of evolution of life.

So people who fought one occupying regime, such as Home Army, often found themselves being hunted as fascists by occupying Soviets, for example; and while the volunteer who helped her to secure her son was of this resistance group in Poland, the general membership of the group was just as antisemitic as general public of Poland even before nazis were in power, in fact almost as soon as Poland was a nation post WWI. That Heidelberg was the most virulent in antisemitism amongst the German universities isn't advertised for tourists who are shown a pretty picture of the castle and river, now, and told it is a respectable university, is perhaps not a surprise - and one owes to the author for bringing it out.

Then there are the mussnazi, the Germans in various posts of good standing who joined and spout for survival but don't quite subscribe to the nazi thinking and aren't very antisemitic at that. And the strident lesser Germans who want to get the Jews sent east even as their superiors caution them about Allies being at the border, or even in town, and to change their thinking since the regime has lost, which the lesser ones won't accept so easily - they have nothing to sustain them post nazi era of hating various victims of the time, and snatching everything that belonged to those that were sent off to extermination camps. The other main character, Rita's paramour who also acquires another identity and survives in very different, very far away places from her until they meet again, giving the author a chance to describe those people and places in that era - Spain, Russia.

But the slightly unacceptable and at any rate shocking bit is when Rita decides, having seen her sone alive after all with the woman from Home Army who had managed to save him, to not tell anyone, in the interest of saving not only the son from trauma a second time but the woman who had saved him. One would think bonds of blood and the years of having agonised for him, having gone into all sorts of danger to chance finding him, would at least allow her to tell the adults in question, even if not immediately demanding custody. Surely they could have worked out a solution whereby everyone would be together, in harmony?

What the book did not need, except probably forced by the publishers as de rigeur for last few years, is the physical details of intimacy of various characters. If the story was were published as a true story rather than as a novel, it could have been avoided!

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust; by Edith Hahn Beer, Susan Dworkin.

Edith Hahn survived the Holocaust hiding in plain sight, like a few others - few, compared to the number that existed before the Holocaust in Europe, and also compared to the number that perished in the Holocaust as per the nazi determination of making Europe "Judenfrei", free of Jews. She went on to live her life, mostly determined not to look back, like most of such survivors of so harrowing an ordeal, until later in the century when a combination of factors made it imperative and possible to save their stories from being extinguished with them as they grew old and life was no longer a guarantee.

This need to save their stories from oblivion into recorded history was the motivation, while their need to live and not look back had been taken care of by lives lived in relative safety, families grown anew and more. And one of the key factors that had silenced such stories from being published earlier in the century, especially the post war years, was now no longer that relevant - which was the post WWII accommodation of hundreds, thousands of erstwhile nazis by various world powers including the Vatican and also the policy of US initiated by Allen Dulles in the interest of US and its cold war against the Soviets, resulting in helping hundreds of war criminals to flee or hide in Europe with other identities, or even without if it were possible to have them ignored.

And since the victims of  Holocaust were meanwhile silent, exposure of such war crimes and the general atmosphere of antisemitism of Europe was to remain hidden in plain sight too, the stories of various victims and their criminals or those that survived due to help and their helpers, saviours, meanwhile being hidden in plain sight too.

Thankfully that era is abating, and a few stories are now being heard by the world, published now that the stigma and strictures against their publications are somewhat abated.
........................................................................................................


Edith Hahn, like many of the Jews of Europe of that era, was from a family not very strict in observance, although they did practice and observe some, but were more into the then current life of their nations, their time, with their aspirations taking them to the higher echelons of education in performing arts, medicine, law or business. Often they joined military of their nations too, and had fought in the WWI too without the antisemitism of their societies being not affected by it whatsoever.

Edith had aspired to be a judge due to a famous case in court during her young years in school, and did go on to almost finish her education in law, except the Anschluss and subsequent laws imposed in Austria made it impossible for her to take her final exams that would qualify her in Vienna, her home town, as a Doctor in Law. Her younger sisters escaped to various safe havens - Ersatz Israel, Great Britain - and went on to become parts of their new nations, while Edith and her mother lived on in Vienna, until picked up off street by authorities to be sent off to Germany for slave labour in farms. Edith successfully argued into being sent off alone, and spent years slaving in farms and factories in abominable conditions of starvation and cold, until she was sent back to Vienna for purpose of being deported to east "for resettlement". Her mother had already been sent off, and Edith never saw her again, although hoping against hope to do so one day.

Edith survived due to her own determination, her ability to hide herself in plain sight by submerging her personality and pretending to be illiterate and stupid, and with some luck, and a good deal of help from various people who helped her with food, shelter, and a change of identity - and then she met someone in Munich who was so determined to marry her, his own antisemitism and the danger of marrying her were non sequitur in the context in spite of her having told him of her being Jewish.

How Edith lived her life as Grete Vetter, a wife of a German who had grown up during nazi era and did think and spout along antisemitic lines but helped her nevertheless, how she managed to escape detection of her being Jewish until Russians occupied eastern Germany and she suddenly found herself not only able to say who she was but now became very valuable as an educated person who was definitely not a nazi, how she went on to be a judge for a while until it became too dangerous for her to stay on in another totalitarian regime and she managed to escape to Great Britain to join her sister, is all very gripping.

Very valuable of course are the insights into human characters - how people had a choice of being decent or otherwise even in those circumstances, and how various people made those choices sheer out of their own volition. And she has much to say about her experiences and her understanding of societies and humans as individuals, which she says, profound truths expressed in concise but nevertheless definite terms, worth attention. For example, her early realisation that what the Jews had thought of as a mere prejudice, the antisemitism in ambient society, was a hatred inclucated and nurtured by teachings of church, that was submerged until freed by the nazi occupation of the nation.

That the churches are still continuing the lies used to flame this hatred is something of an open secret, known to all churchgoers who take the church teachings as truth - although this truth is about as true as the gospels validated by church of Rome post Nicea, and allowed to be read by general public.

Nehru: A Contemporary`S Estimate; by Walter Crocker.

The writer was a contemporary of the noble and charismatic world figure Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, but that is where any common ground - other than time spent by Crocker in India - ends.

Nehru was more than charismatic and beloved leader, noble of spirit and prince of soul, someone who had a not only very acute mind but a seeking intellectual thirst that went on regardless of humongous work, age and strife, someone who took trouble to be nice and courteous in trying circumstances, was brought up in comparative wealth but gave it all up for independence fight and then for India. That is a small and incomplete summary of what Crocker goes on to describe about Nehru, and it is all too true and more.

But the writing of Crocker in this work, not in style but in substance and level of perception, is so skewed between two poles of admiration of the man on one side and complete disdain or worse for the nation, the culture, the whole background, that one can only surmise either that the writer is unaware just how thoroughly, how firmly he is rooted in his colonial, racist, and religious background, to the extent of automatically assuming all other alternatives are beneath consideration, not worthy of attempting to understand, certainly not of respect and never as good as those he was familiar with - or, that this book, contrary to asserted claim, is not a work of the one writer mentioned, but has whole chapters of insertions of material that is derogatory and more, often enough to the point of vicious accusations or callous lies, assaulting India in general, Hindus and Hinduism more pointedly, and Nehru to the extent he is involved or did not please the erstwhile colonial masters.

Lest it seem far fetched, Crocker was indeed a part of British colonial forces stationed in India and disliked it intensely, and was thereby likely prejudiced as were most of those of his background, more sympathetic to muslims and church communities as the British ruling most often were, which is not hidden in this book except by omission of any mention of horrendous massacres perpetrated against Hindus by muslims or against the indigenous by rulers in Goa.

Such prejudice is exhibited here as often with explicit condemnation of one side as with either lack of mentioning of the other, as it is with even complete lies on side of his prejudice - for example he mentions the differences between what is termed South India and what is normally understood as North, which is generally understood as north or south of the ancient mountain range across middle, Vindhya; what he specifically, repeatedly mentions as the difference is "Hindu revivalism", which makes one wonder if he intends to force the reader to accept his unspecified assertion that Hinduism is dead and better off so.

In reality, which he either intends to cover up with this trick or refuses to see, or is blind to, is that it is only someone in a state of unconsciousness, coma or at the very least in a state understood opposite of well being, that needs to be revived, not someone conscious and relatively well.

With over a millennium of deadly onslaughts of islamic invaders marauding, looting, ruling and generally destroying the indigenous culture of India in general and Hinduism in particular, and that too quite intentionally, deliberately, zealously so, the regions more under the islamic rules were those where any need of reviving and reasserting were felt; and Hinduism and Indian culture that were dormant, beleaguered but far from wiped out (unlike anywhere other than in India, indigenous culture in India was not wiped out completely as it was elsewhere under islamic onslaught), were given a fresh breath of respite when islamic rule gave way to British (or French) colonial rule. (In Goa the story was different, and Portuguese rule competed well with the worst of islamic in attempted annihilation of Indian culture, and of Hinduism.)

There are many pointers to the truth of this, from relative freedom of women in society to changed rituals of traditional weddings and more, to see that this divide across north and south is related to the relative extent and force of islamic rule of the regions. And similar pattern can be seen in other parts, west and east and northeast and what was northwest before partition.

Another example, his assertion that Goa was a part of Portugal (rather than a colony, as is obvious), and had no problem and was people with catholics while a few Indians had migrated (did he think Goa was brought like a ship from Portugal and fixed to rest of India? one wonders) - completely ignoring the massacres perpetrated by Portugal against Hindus, complete outlawing of Hindu traditions and even weddings so much so the people of Goa hurried through every religious ceremony (and still do, from centuries of habit of fear ingrained) lest the Portugese soldiers come and wreak havoc, and other atrocities he simply denies ever took place.

A similar insistence on his part goes on against India in other matters such as relations with neighbours, giving equal benefit of doubt at best and questioning if India would stay a democracy post Nehru. Perhaps an example of his racism that is not clear as racism to him, though, is about Nagaland. Crocker points out that NEFA (now named Arunachal Pradesh, a state at northeast boundary of India), rightfully does not belong to India because not only China questions it but the people are of "mongoloid" features. He says the same of Nagas, and it is not clear if he knows the two are separate regions. But clearly, it is racist to insist that races cannot be divided across national boundaries, and that invaders' and migrants' rights supersede those of indigenous? He takes care of those by complete neglect of relevant history (such as Naga are part of Mahabhaarataa, hence not strangers to India and not connected to India only due to British as he seems to claim) and more - just as British did it by the invention of Aryan migration theory, discrediting and disfranchising all of Hindus of India except those of south India.

In reality, Aryans were never supposed to be a race as such but a culture of civilised code of conduct, the code intricate and taught in society painstakingly in families, homes and live-in schools. The very word Aarya relates to Light, not colour of skin or other physical features but to a standard of behaviour related to an enlightened mind and a soul awakened.

That this was misunderstood by Europe, or was deliberately twisted to suit European prejudices, or worse, due to Macaulay doctrine of separating everything good of India from India and deliberately breaking the spirit of India, is swept under the rug as is the deliberate use of Swastika, which the very word means "well being", for purposes far from well being and in fact for evil.

Crocker comes across as, at best, struggling with his more than evident admiration and adoration of a prince of soul that was Jawaharlal Nehru, and compensating by his treatment of all that is India, people and history and culture of India, Hindus, and so on; at worst, as someone who allowed insertion of whole chapters of matter to that effect for that purpose that was at most rewritten by him so the writing style as such at a superficial level is not too discordant with his adoration of Nehru.

But what is indubitably true is that the great soul that was Nehru comes alive in reading this work, and that is in spite of really very little detail about him of a personal nature as such. For anyone even slightly familiar with the era or the halo of the figure, reading this is a deja vu.

Helga: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany; by Karen Truesdell Riehl.

In Forbidden Strawberries, her autobiographical account of the Holocaust years, Cipora (Tsipora) Hurwitz says something that amounts to this - that she wants to tell about those people that are gone due to the murders, entire families and villages and regions, but did once exist, and she won't allow them to become non existent by the acts of murderers.

Reading Helga, this book that is another autobiographical account of the same years but from the other side of the divide, one realises how very true this thinking of Cipora Hurwitz is, how very close the Jews and many others came to being not merely forgotten but claimed non existent, by the determined attempt of the nazis to extinguish their beings, lives, existence. And Cipora Hurwitz is not the only one, or even the first one, to have thought of this - most survivors of the Holocaust have known this, and it is something that applies to other victims of such crimes too, whether the three million of East Bengal '71 or one million Armenians of a century ago, the women killed by various relatives of their own or the Yezdis and others massacred by zealots in name of the faith of killers.

Helga is from the divide, the deep ravine that is a mere thin line socially, the wall that is not concrete or even a glass wall, that was of Roman creation post driving Jews from Judea, and existed in Europe between Jews and others for centuries, until early last century it went crazy and people from one side were often unaware of their neighbours across the divide being exterminated. That is, those that were aware of the people across the said wall at all, whether they admitted them as humans as Helga's parents and grandparents did, or not, as the youth group Helga was forced to join were made to think.

Most of us are aware of Hitler Youth as the young boys that were brought in to war towards end of war in Germany to fight the last battles. This story is of real children, specifically from the protagonist's point of view that is girls centred but does mention there were boys too in the same groups, from '39 to the end of the war when the Russians were at Berlin already.

As incredible as the earlier parts where the young at ten are forced to join the youth groups is, it gets only more incredible what with the indoctrination that is so very easy and the very religious zeal with which the young in the story view the leader they are taught to worship - until one reflects that the tactic is merely copied from church and other institutional indoctrination which is no different, after all. Here, too, there was the paraphernalia of the other sort associated that helps, such as food provided at group meetings and subsequently at the resorts where they were stationed for years.

Until the very end, these kids did not have a real clue that they were being fed lies, even though their parents often knew but were too afraid to tell the kids, and the only clue they had if any was a personal acquaintance or more than one, about the people maligned being not quite so dirty or evil or ugly as they were told, whether the maligned were Jews or those of other countries, other parts of the world.

How suddenly the tale changes from this well fed youth world of lies and delusions to a sudden order given them to leave and go, since Russians were then too close, and the complete horror of so young a bunch of girls alone on roads to Berlin choked with people trying to escape the Russians while these young girls tried to walk home - and coped with numerous dangers, being shot at and raped, and more, is the horror of the last few chapters.

And one can only wish it all had been a horror story rather than history, and the Helga of this and Lalechka and Cipora of other tales of the time had been safe with their parents! If only one could fly back through time and clutch them to heart and fly them off to a safer zone in time!

Lalechka: An Amazing Holocaust Survivor Rescue Story; by Amira Keidar.

The title is more than merely apt in that it is amazing, it is about a child that survived holocaust due to rescue by her mother's friends who hid her and moved her whenever they were askance about her being noticed, and showered her with love and care in those vital babyhood years - she was born in October '41 - until she was handed over to Jewish organisations that took care of bringing her to Israel to her uncle as per her mother's wishes. But it meanwhile portrays an amazing landscape in which a few women growing up from childhood together stay friends and care for one another even as world explodes around them and it is highly difficult, to say the least, to manage one's very survival.

In the process of telling the story the author also gives the surrounding picture of Poland as it was before occupation - where Jewish people were surviving despite increasing restrictions and "economic warfare" prescribed by politicians, and more practiced in various ways across the country - and during occupation when it got difficult to survive the conditions imposed by invading German army and gestapo, until the Jewish population of Poland was almost completely massacred. The details of horrors perpetrated make it all come alive, and it is impossible to describe the horror one experiences even as one reads it, realising they went through this, and that people perpetrated this.

Lalechka survived and went on to live in Israel where she migrated, alone for much of the time after she had been of necessity handed over to the organisations by her mother's friends so unwillingly, and it took years before she could understand any of her past, her family's travails, and more. The lonely child affected by having to move so much and losing the loving care so early is heartrending, especially when she is finally visited and is angry about why it was so late.

One detail the author brings out quietly, but without special emphasis, is how the girls, the young women are strong despite the odds, while the males in the story are human as well, not the giants of the fairy tales embraced by commercial popular culture but heroes in their own right who care for the families under those very trying years and circumstances.

Forbidden Strawberries: by Cipora Hurwitz.

True life account of a woman who, as a small child, grew up in occupied Poland during the second world war, hidden most of the day for years when Jewish children were feared taken away and murdered by the nazis - although the writer points out more than once and with good reason too, that to say nazis instead of Germans is merely a political correctness bordering on fraud. She points out that those that did it had been brought up German, and those that later denied being nazi nevertheless did not give up the identities and whereabouts of the war criminals hiding in plain sight, even when their crimes were neither unknown nor in question.

This child's parents were eventually taken away, presumably to Treblinka where most of those in the neighbourhood were, and murdered as were all others. She was protected by those that did remain, and survived, miraculously, not only the hiding for hours but subsequently the slave labour, the camps, the abominable conditions and starvation, the witnessing of the massacres and burning of humans in camps where the ashes from chimneys fell in the strawberry fields that the concentration camp children were supposed to pick for the Germans but not eat. Thus the title.

Cipora was to survive, later find other Jewish people including children when she was finally back in her neighbourhood, even some relatives including a brother who had fled to Russia and survived in Siberia, and then migrate to Israel via refuge in camps in Germany and France. Even post the losing of war, she describes how a German policewoman inspecting trains treated her unfairly, inhumanly, not with counrtesy or correctness but rather with terrorising tactics, for a crime (or rather what in the era of deprivation post war was a crime) committed by a German couple sitting next to them - which fact was testified to by the rest of the occupants of the train compartment.

The account of the life in Poland close to Russian border and elsewhere is very detailed and alive, and brings the whole horror home, of how the local Polish were only too eager to follow the nazi diktats long before Germany occupied Poland, and how they were not happy to see any Jews survive, as often as not. How German occupation dehumanised Jewish population, how the Jews survived only by fleeing across the river to Russia or else by miracle or chance, and more. Some not very publicised details too, such as Ukrainian and Cossack troops were used for the horrors perpetrated in neighbourhoods, by Germans and Russians later; how Red Army occupation was a breath of relief for the short while after war when the Jews were yet to migrate to Israel, and the various specific stories of Jewish families in Poland and later in places where she stayed for short while during migration to Israel.

One is glad Cipora survived, had a life despite the horrors she suffered, and lived to tell the tale. And too, that she was forthright, not politically correct in that she did not deny the horrors unlike the friend of her husband who provoked her into a rage by accusing her of falling prey to propaganda against Germans, or choose not to tell.

It is all too well known a phenomena how victims who survive can be too traumatised to accept it all happened, and when treated with a bit of honeytrap by the tormentors, can either forgive or deny it all. This happens on personal level, and politically it is often convenient. Nevertheless such denial is a lie, a falsehood, a fraud perpetrated not only against the victims of past but the innocent of the future who are denied truth thereby.

The Girl With No Name; by Diney Costeloe.

This story is a sequel, though not with the same characters, of The Runaway Family, in that it is about the persecution of Jews by nazis and the story of those few that managed to escape to get to England by refugee trains, chiefly children. The earlier one ends where a family manages to escape and arrive, and this begins with arrival of the children on the refugee train to be welcomed in England by their foster parents.

This one focuses on one girl, escaped alive from Hanau, who has to deal repeatedly not only with her identity crisis as a refugee, but also with the dichotomy of being seen as an enemy alien by some in the country where she takes refuge. There are fewer of those, fortunately, and more of the good caring people who give her a home, love of their hearts and more.

The girl, Liselotte Becker who is naturally called Lisa at first, moreover loses her memory when she is caught in an air raid, and hence the name.

The author is excellent in descriptions of how England experienced war, from the refugee trains arriving with children to end of war, and too of the various individual characters who are shaped differently, by nature and by experience thereafter, even when sharing experience.

One wishes though that the final choice of Lisa didn't quite depend on chance and events, and that she had had the choice instead and chosen well, as destiny or rather choices of another did for her. But in any case, it is a marvel the author makes this tale so satisfying, in spite of the terrible events she is describing without sugarcoating.

The Runaway Family: by Diney Costeloe.

The Runaway Family deals with the beginnings of persecution of Jews in Germany under nazi rule, up to the point where a few, mostly children, were allowed to escape officially, travelling on trains out of Germany, by letting Jewish organisations abroad provide foster homes where they could be taken care of. The beginning of the story is not exactly beginning of the persecution of Jews, only of the nazi methodical escalation of it until they were massacred in millions.

This book deals in a novel form by portraying the tale of a family of parents and four very young children who have to run from place to place, hiding from persecution, trying to survive, in face of the poverty imposed on Jews via confiscation of properties and deprivation of work sources. Food is difficult to manage, too, what with Jews being forbidden from most activities including buying food, or walking in park, or being in playgrounds.

Even when familiar with the general theme of how persecution works, when reading it hits one anew, how vicious and mindless, how heartless this persecution was, rendering humans to a non human state de jure, and too how the people around often accepted and even joined in the persecution, however much most now assert they knew nothing then.

This book ends well, with this particular family escaping to England safely, albeit not all at once. But the author is very good at the descriptions of various stages of their travails, which are in all likelihood experiences of various families and people who lived at that time in those regions and went through this and lived to tell.

That Kennedy Girl: by Robert DeMaria.

This one is a rare insight into the very famous, glamourous, and wealthy family often named American royalty - the Kennedy family - from a point of view they are rarely seen.

Most often of course, people look at things from a male-centric point of view, especially when the paterfamilias is so powerful, so driven by the aspiration to rise above the slot one is relegated to when in a minority that is looked down on and not allowed in mainstream, not quite near the top. This gets all the more so when the said paterfamilias succeeds in his plans, and so spectacularly at that. It is all the more so and even only natural when this success involves someone as glamorous, as noble, as John F. Kennedy, especially when he and his twin brother of spirit carry a nation's hopes and are assassinated so young, with world's shock and tears marking their family loss as that of their nation's, even that of the world.

But the tragedies that beset the Kennedy clan did not begin with the two more famous brothers, or even with the known tragic death in war of the eldest of the brothers, the firstborn whom the hopes of the paterfamilias were pinned on to begin with, in the second world war. There were the two sisters too, of the elder of the siblings, whose stories are not as well publicised.

One of course is the very pathetic elder daughter Rosemary Kennedy, who was subjected to terrible and terribly unfair treatment - the parents had a lobotomy performed and then had her live in seclusion in Wisconsin far away from not only the limelight the clan lived in, but also very rarely visited by most of family, including her mother Rose Kennedy who didn't visit her for decades. All this, because she was "rebellious", and a hint of some escapades that the catholic mother did not approve of and the father couldn't allow the scandals obstruct his plans for careers for his sons and himself - and the young woman was reduced to a vegetable, living life of an orphan.

This book deals with the other, lesser known story of the Kennedy daughter who died young, far away from her homes, having been estranged from her family due to the parents' - especially the mother's - harsh demands of sacrifice of happiness from the young daughter who wished only to marry someone she loved.

Kathleen Kennedy, did a little better than her elder sister Rosemary, but not much - she had to fight terrible battles only because her mother saw it as a sin when Kathleen wished to marry an Englishman, never mind he was an aristocrat and well off, William Cavendish, Lord Hartington who was eventually to be Duke of Devonshire. Joe Kennedy, the eldest brother, stood up for her and with her at the wedding where others present were the Devonshire family of the groom, and in a short span of less than a year thereafter both Joe and the newly married groom died in the war. The mother of the bereaved bride had only an offer for her of a chance to redeem herself from the sin by having her marriage annulled.

Kathleen didn't give up on life and love, and was all set to marry another British aristocrat, but both died in an air crash before they could wed. A young life so very lost, and one grieves for the unnecessary losses, sadness, and more.

But what hits one more than any other factor, reading this, is how horrible the whole imposition of sin on innocence is, so enforced by institutionalisation of guilt to rule the world in form of religious strictures that have obedience to an institution as the first condition, with no freedom of thought, much less of spirit or soul.

The Start, 1904-1930: Twentieth Century Journey Vol. I (William Shirer's Twentieth Century Journey); by William L. Shirer.

Shirer is known most for his famous book about the Third Reich, but reading other works of his is illuminating and satisfying just as much, and funny, this book about his early years is no exception! Of course, one thinks this is funny because one expects a level of writing suitable more to a youth of twenty something, and this is in all likelihood written later, but then again, one forgets being young is not necessarily equivalent of being unaware, and someone who grew so well could only have begun by awakening during those years he is writing about in this work.

So while one goes through a first part that does suit those early years and one's low expectations of such a youth, the second chapter zaps one awake and one begins to marvel at all the author has to tell.

He begins with his early years in Chicago, and a concise history of all that is worthy of mention about the town it then was, and there is much every which way one looks - and much one is usually not told in the usual descriptions of the history of the nation much less city, for example about the labour movements and the stiff opposition from the business and politics nexus that broke them. Then there are the various great minds he talks about, including his father, that influenced him, thinkers and authors, those early years.

The family shifted to Cedar Rapids when his father died, rather early, and he describes the new place and history thereof, along with histories of his ancestors and family, all very very interesting. And then in mid twenties post WWI he is in Paris, as described in the first part, and begins another very interesting part, what with the various writers and so forth he comes immediately into contact with, and life in Paris, and more.

The memoirs one would necessarily expect of course to become immediately far more interesting when the young man shifts to Paris, comes in contact with the great authors and others - artists, politicians, journalists, ballet divas and more - and so it does, right up to the end. It is a testimony to the author's general persona, his mind and spirit and awareness that it doesn't reduce to a catalogue of names, and that after finishing it on reflection one realises that the part prior to Paris was well balanced, not a boring prologue to the exciting bits.

The Europe theatre in this, straddled as it is between the two world wars and set mostly in Paris, London and Vienna, does remind one a good deal of the World's End series of Upton Sinclair. The sensibilities of the two works, perhaps the two authors, are far too alike in this, and one wonders if they were close in life too, or was it merely a similarity of mind and spirit of the two that shared a time frame in the world events along with interests that focus on the space very similar.

Very worth reading for anyone interested in the world events of that era, or in consciousness awakening, for that matter.

January 11, 2017. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................