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!
