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!
