The Munich Girl; lby Phyllis Edgerly Ring.

A girl who is orphaned early and hasn't known a father, one that she has a right to, even if she has a loving father figure in her life, might deep down hanker for that right, and consequently allow herself to be subjected to abuse by a man in her life, emotional and verbal, possibly worse.

A woman abused by a father, whether really her own or the only one she ever knew to be the father, might suffer worse, because she might then allow herself to be subjected to lack of rights by a man who owes her recognition - or even more than one, as in not only men in her life but male colleagues and more.

And the more a man abuses and denies and manipulates such a woman, the more she takes it as a test of her virtue proven by being sweet despite the abuses. That the world, especially male world but also the women who accept this as the only share allowed to women, take this as normal, and measure women's worth by this criteria, has the effect of the said world of males - and the women who accept it - treating a normal person, one who happens to be female, with hostility, for not accepting such abuse, for demanding better behaviour and treatment, and she is subjected to wide ranging abuse, accusations and gossip, and worse.

This sort of thing only changes if the men in her life have power and wealth, and not only treat her well but demand that others do so, with punitive measures in place for aberrations. Human rights for women are treated with suspicion and worse, and this is often true even more in West than those of societies seen by West as lesser progressive.

This work deals with this phenomena, interwoven with interpersonal relationships of various kinds, with the whole twentieth century horror of the third Reich and it's aftermath as background, and a romantic angle that is idealised in almost every way but textbook. That is to say, instead of a tall dark taciturn male, here the romantic angle is a good guy who happens to be not only over six feet but sapphire blue eyes with gold brown hair. And a German to boot, and there is more. He is decent, because his mother doesn't know who his father was - she was raped by three ss officers whose faces she never saw, as punishment for her being loving to the lebensborn babies, instead of leaving them alone as instructed, so they grow strong - so the doctrine went.

But there is more.

The author writes about well known persons, especially one, and has her protagonists set as characters who were familiar to bordering intimate with this character who remained in shadows in thick of the whole third reich main stage - Eva Braun, namely - with exploring this treatment of women by men in particular and world in general as the running theme. The story goes back and forth, between 1995 as present, and from early thirties to end of war as background, not flashback but in process of unfolding the story of the mother of protagonist, who she discovers had met, knew and was even clse to, Eva Braun, albeit at a distance that had the two live parallel lives that each knew nothing of details of the other, but shared concerns that were same or similar.

So for examples as the war is ongoing, each is concerned about her man, and in pain due to being distanced, but for exactly opposite reasons - Peggy is in love with Erich who is working in resistance, and hence stays away for her safety, while Eva was denied recognition by her man for reasons of his single image necessary for manipulating the psyche of his nation.

There are several interesting angles. For one, the author states ethics and so forth through the characters, and not only opposition to the nazi doctrines in general but also a flat declaration towards the end that they and their leader were subhuman. Yet, the book from the beginning is dissecting the allies general attitude, and not only questioning the allies actions during the war but also, by various characters portrayed that are from UK or US , painting them as not necessarily better, while ordinary Germans or at least representatives here are shown as the really good, homely, decent ones,  who suffered not only under the third reich but subsequently under the changed situations too.

The angle that's most interesting despite all this rich tapestry, however, is an unexpected one.

Peggy is, from beginning, sort of - not always, but often enough - bothered by an almost second sight, able to clearly see coming events and ends of some, not always and not everyone but just enough to be intriguing, because unless such a gift is nurtured and developed, this is how it remains.

But the hair raising part is when she is, unexpectedly, invited by her friend's paramour - a relationship she knows nothing about, till years after - for an interview that she had neither asked for nor expected, and meets him. The descriptions of her realising that he is looking into her eyes, and that it's a challenge, and her returning the gaze and more, and especially the further part, is the hair raising bit, is the part that tells one that this author isn't playing this for readership. That she finally concludes that he was the far lesser, worthless person, while Eva Braun was the truly valuable one with kindness and more, hinges more on that perception by Peggy than the general historical valuations of the two.

And the love story that all the while is weaving on borders of home, relationships, and more, goes satisfactory too. One only wishes that the author's writing skills matched the canvas she has painted, and they fall short because that canvas is huge.





 

Lilac Girls; by Martha Hall Kelly.

One sees this unusual title and beautiful cover, and going by the blurb takes it to be a halfway serious account of three young women with lives intertwined, assuming they began perhaps at a boarding school together. One couldn't be further off.

One begins to read, and the first sentence is more appropriate for a love story that ends in a tragedy due to a young girl falling for someone perhaps more fond of playing with hearts and breaking them. Again, one couldn't be further off.

Then one sees the date, and it's the day Poland was invaded, so one expects a bit more interesting book. This time, the expectations fall short. Perhaps all this misleading was not entirely the fault of the reader?

Then begin the chapters switching between three, two young - and one slightly less young - women, telling their stories first hand. One is an upper class society person working in N.Y. city with homes in CT and Hamptons, another a young girl in Lublin looking at devastation of her home town by German military, and the third, a medical student in Dusseldorf who is forced to work for her uncle the butcher, out of necessity, in more than one capacity, since her parents aren't well off, and her aunt supports her education.

Each of these has her problems, some from the society she is part of, and others due to the time. Caroline deals with working without salary and more for charity, at the French consulate in N.Y., sending clothes and more to displaced children across France in orphanages. Kasia is dealing with devastation of her hometown and society invaded and trampled, as they are being picked on to be sent to camps. And Herta is trying to be a doctor in a highly misogynistic society that is worse under the regime she sees as something good for her country.

It's not until one is through three quarters of the book that one realises with a jolt, that this isn't a novel one thought it was, even based on real events and places, but is about characters that were real persons, not just types that they represent.

Herta is the most disappointing, in that being a doctor and facing obstacles of recognition in that capacity, she throws ethics out and joins in the experiments performed on live camp incarcerated women who aren't volunteers, without compunction. Here the author takes the view that she ought to have been better as a woman, and gives her performing sexual slavery to the uncle as a sign of her moral weakness, perhaps with an idea that a woman in that dilemma ought to give up education and be content with a life approved by society. That this approved life is after all an approved sexual slavery is not perhaps a problem for her. But one may take the view that Herta is a product of her times and nation, not that different from the average German who made similar choices in whatever capacity including doctors, and is more determined to keep her status as a doctor because of the hard fight she has throughout her life in keeping it.

Caroline is of course the easiest to like, being kind hearted as to hock her family heirlooms to fund her charity boxes sent to France, and so ethereal even in her one love. One can be in awe, or take it thst being cushioned by her security and her mother's love, she can afford the strength. Either way, lovely person.

It's the young Polish Kasia and her other friends, relatives and more, innates of the Ravensbruck camp, rabbits as they were called, who form most of the body of this horrendous story, one that hits deeply and repeatedly, surprising even a reader familiar with the horrors of the era through a dozen or two books of the memoirs kind.

Where they found strength to go on, is the eternal unspoken question. One is glad they did.

Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File; by Alan Levy

One who is less than half aware of the history of the times might take up this book with a vague notion that it was about the life and persona of a man famous for hunting down some of the criminals against humanity who had managed to hide from justice for years, indeed, for decades, until his efforts caught up with them.

And the book does begin with a chapter about him and his personal history, as a part of the larger scape that his time and place were deeply involved in, with all the resulting finesses to do with the role of Austria and Austrians in the nazi movement, the anschluss, the holocaust and aftermath.

But really the book has a much larger canvas, which is that of the major parts of the work of the man in his untiring and often solitary on going war for justice in hunting the criminals down. And so the subsequent chapters methodically deal with some of the prominent nazis he managed to hunt down.

But the surprising part is, despite the horror and disgust evoked by each of the said criminals, and they are indeed horrendous, with names involved being Eichmann, Mengele, Stangl and likes of them - it's the three or so chapters that deal with the question of Kurt Waldheim that grip one, and not only because he was head of U.N. and subsequently the president of Austria, but more so because, it's someone famous for various reasons but mostly because the world is still unclear in this respectabout whether he indeed was a war criminal, the lack of clarity being as much due to lack of decisive evidence still to be found against him, as for Waldheim's seemingly permanent policy of evasions until caught and then a verbose evasion until caught, on and on.

At the very beginning, of course, there is a chapter describing his background - his being born, life in Poland that had shifting birders what with this or that neighbour occupying a part here or there, his education, and disruption of life that was brought by WWII and German occupation followed by ghetto life and concentration camps, his surviving it and miraculously meeting his wife who had equally miraculously survived as well, and the beginning of the life that he led thereafter, not as the architect he had qualified as but a seeker of justice for the victims of holocaust. As the author describes his umpteenth meeting with him, this one after Wiesenthal was ninety and had curtailed his travels,

" Our conversation about the seamy side of Bohemian life only served to make a mellow Wiesenthal wax nostalgic for his student years in Prague (1928–32):

‘Those four years were the best time of my young life. I came from Poland after being ‘liberated’ too many times by Cossacks and Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Austrians – all at odds with each other, but all anti-Semites. The Czechs, on the other hand, were always fair to Jews; the Slovaks weren’t. Only in Prague was I ever forgetting I was a Jew.’

Once, though, a Czech classmate from the provinces invited him home for a weekend. Wiesenthal remembers hearing his friend shout into the crank-up phone in the dormitory corridor: ‘Mom, I’m bringing Wiesenthal with me. He’s a Jew, but you’ll like him.’ The old man recalls the episode fondly."
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Quoting from the book,

""All too often in this part of the world, fear of one lie gives birth to another lie, in the foolish hope that by protecting ourselves from the first lie we will be protected from lies in general. But a lie can never protect us from a lie. Those who falsify history do not protect the freedom of a nation but rather constitute a threat to it. The idea that a person can rewrite his autobiography is one of the traditional self-deceptions of Central Europe. Trying to do that means hurting oneself and one’s fellow countrymen. When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete."

– Czech (then Czechoslovak) President Václav Havel at the opening of the Salzburg Festival in Austria after he was introduced by President Kurt Waldheim on 26 July 1990 (translated from the Czech by Káča Poláčková-Henley)."



"No Nobel for Simon Wiesenthal makes him no less noble. Rabbi Hier of the Wiesenthal Centre puts it most eloquently:

‘Simon, to his credit, doesn’t have to apologize to anyone for what he’s done with his life. Without Simon Wiesenthal, the subject of the Holocaust would not really receive serious attention anywhere in the world. Let’s also state for the record that, although the popular writers on the Holocaust began writing in the sixties – that’s when Elie Wiesel first started getting published, too – there was still a big period of time between 1945 and the early sixties: a crucial period when there was the greatest pressure to forget. But if there was one person who kept it alive, that was Simon Wiesenthal. So this is all to his credit that nobody can take away from him. Without him, all this that we’re talking about in America, the mere fact that there would be in Washington a President’s Council, a Commission on the Holocaust headed by Elie Wiesel, would have been an impossibility, because the subject would have been forgotten. Simon was a stubborn man who kept it alive through the worst of times.’

When Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Simon Wiesenthal did not rejoice at this recognition of Holocaust remembrance, for no love has been lost between these two titans of survivorship. Though Wiesel once came to Wiesenthal’s rescue as a fund-raiser when his Viennese bank collapsed in 1974, Simon says that Wiesel later opposed his poaching on his turf when the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies was built in Los Angeles three years later. One bone of contention was Simon’s insistence that the Wiesenthal Centre, despite being a division of Yeshiva University, should take a non-sectarian approach to the Holocaust:

‘I was for over four years in different camps with people from fifteen nations: Jews, Gentiles, gypsies, communists. Through this experience, my view on the Holocaust and the whole problem of Nazism is a lot different from Elie Wiesel, who was only six months in camps and only with Jews. For me was the Holocaust not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together – many of them only because they helped Jews. This made me unpopular with Jewish organizations – and, when the Wiesenthal Centre happened, I became a danger to them. Elie Wiesel wrote that what I was doing was “a diminution” of the tragedy. But he and they are the diminishers, for it is they who reduced the whole tragedy to a problem between Nazis and Jews instead of a crime against humanity. ‘I know I am not only the bad conscience of the Nazis.

I am also the bad conscience of the Jews. Because what I have taken up as my duty was everybody’s duty.’"

Needless to say, a must read.
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Some interesting insights are in the earliest part, one with Simon Wiesenthal telling the author about his work, life and more:-

"I am tired, too. I cannot teach my work to other people. There is nobody to succeed me, nobody left who is much younger, who would have my experience or could find out all that I carry in my head. But I will never retire . . . If I ever close my Centre here, I will have nothing to do but wait for my death. Besides, there are others waiting, too. For if I closed my office, it would be a Nazi holiday and a Jewish defeat – a defeat for humanity, a defeat for justice, too. And, believe me, the “heroes” will celebrate it as a victory – and they will begin again that much sooner.’

He denied he was ‘some kind of modern Don Quixote or Jewish James Bond.

'Yes, my work is an adventure, but there are no romantics about it. You could make thriller after thriller out of my files, but I am not like James Bond because the results are not immediate; they can come in years, they may take generations. And Don Quixote I am not. Yes, many times I am fighting against imagination or a world that doesn’t understand, but my fight is not without results.’

On his way out, he confided: ‘I will tell you a secret. For a man who was in a ghetto and in concentration camps and lost all his blood relatives, my biggest personal satisfaction is not in having a Nazi arrested. It comes when two Nazis have a quarrel and one threatens the other with “I will go to Simon Wiesenthal about you.” And he does! They are my best informers.’"
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And this, following, is a couple of valuable gems, hidden from most:-


"In Albert Speer’s later years, Hitler’s master builder and diarist of Nazi times had struck up what could not be called a friendship, but a research relationship with Wiesenthal.

So Simon didn’t hesitate to try out his theory on Speer, whose reply came from Heidelberg in an elegant envelope with an ‘A.S.’ monogram and no return address:

'I can’t answer your question completely. Hitler in my presence never spoke of a syphilitic disease, though this does not mean he might not have had one some time earlier. What I can tell you is that his private doctor, Theo Morrell, used to hang his shingle on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin as ‘Specialist in Skin and Venereal Diseases’. From the moment he became the chief official physician of Hitler in 1936, however, that listing of his specialty disappeared.'

This intrigued Wiesenthal, who told me: ‘I am working on it in my spare time. If I can find a solution in another five or ten years, I would be very happy because this would give the whole story of Hitler and the Jews a different picture.’

‘But where do the Jews enter that picture?’ I asked him.

‘Ah!’ said Simon, slapping his knee. ‘I haven’t told you something else. A few years ago, I have a talk with a man who went to school with Hitler. I ask him what Hitler was like in school and he says, “Normal. But maybe this hatred began after he got this infection from a Jewish whore.” . . . So I am looking now for names and details. I am just in the first stages, but I am telling you that if I can find out with evidence that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was the aftermath of an infection from a Jewish prostitute, then all the Nazi racial theories sink a layer lower in the sewer. All the Nazis were anti-Semites, but hardly any of them had any personal experience with Jews. If Hitler did, this gives an answer to why he hated Jews the way he did.’

When I met him, Wiesenthal’s research had brought him in contact with an expatriate physician, Edmund Ronald, then living in Portugal.

In the early 1950s, while working in a Seattle hospital, Dr Ronald had met a young Austrian doctor from Graz who said his late father, also a doctor, had treated Hitler for syphilis long ago. After Austria had been annexed by Germany in 1938, Gestapo agents had confiscated all of his father’s files on that particular patient, but the father had informed his son that Hitler told him he’d caught the disease from a Jewish prostitute before World War I. Though Dr Ronald gave Wiesenthal the name of his source, the young doctor from Graz later settled in the US and has not proved traceable. In 1977, there was a medical debate over whether Hitler was sterile or impotent and Dr Ronald wrote from Bordighera, Italy, to the International Herald Tribune that

'Hitler was rather unlucky in his sexual affairs. He caught – according to Dr Anwyl-Davies, the eminent London venereologist – syphilis from a Jewish prostitute in Vienna in 1910 and had to have anti-syphilitic treatment on and off for the next twenty years and it is not certain that he [was] ever completely cured.'

Dr Ronald, who subsequently died, went on to note that Hitler’s love affair with his Viennese niece, Angela ‘Geli’ Raubal, ended with her unexplained suicide in 1931 at the age of twenty-three.

Wiesenthal suspects she killed herself after her uncle infected her with syphilis. Wiesenthal’s work on Christopher Columbus had been more concentrated and productive. ‘In my research on anti-Semitism throughout history,’ he explained, ‘when I concentrated on the Spanish Inquisition, I discovered an amazing coincidence. The two most important events of 1492 – both of which determined the entire future of Spanish history and much of world history – were the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the discovery of America. All Jews had to be off Spanish soil by midnight of August second.

‘Now Columbus didn’t sail for “India”, as they called all of Asia in those days, until August third, as scheduled. But his sailors had orders to report on the night of the second. This was not customary: a sailor’s last night in port was sacred to him and was usually spent with his family or girlfriend before he came on board next day. I asked myself why.

‘The tides weren’t right for an earlier departure. And why did Columbus personally supervise the roll-call? So I began to look at the roll he called. One tenth of his crew was Jews; some of them, I learned later, may have been rabbis. But, even though nine-tenths of the crew wasn’t Jewish, there was no priest aboard. Very unusual at sea!

‘Then I am looking into the financing of his voyage. This business of Queen Isabella hocking her jewels to pay for it is all legend. With the help of Marrano ministers of hers, the mission was entirely financed by Jewish money.’ A Marrano (from the Spanish word for ‘pig’ or ‘damned’) was a Jew who, in Wiesenthal’s words, ‘outwardly pretended to be a Christian, but secretly remained a Jew’, while a Converso was ‘a convert who broke off all relations with Jews and assimilated’. Both were suspect. It had been the discovery of Marranos partaking of a Passover seder in 1478 that led to the creation of the Spanish Inquisition, which used the rack, the pyre, the wheel, branding-irons and blinding-rods as well as bizarre pure-blood laws (direct ancestors of Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws of racial purity) to get to the very bottom of a victim’s religious beliefs.

‘I began to ask myself,’ Simon went on, ‘why the Jews financed Columbus when all others had refused for years. Who was he and what did the Jews want from him?’

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506), an Italian mariner known to Spaniards as Christóbal Colón, came from a family of ‘Spanish Jews settled in Genoa’, according to his contemporary biographer, Salvadore de Madariaga, who believes the Colóns converted to Christianity during Spanish persecutions in the fourteenth century. Around 1479, Columbus married a Portuguese noblewoman of Marrano descent. After some preliminary study, Wiesenthal went to Spain to examine materials preserved in the Biblioteca Columbina (Columbus Library) in Seville. In the archives, Simon found a dozen intimate letters from Columbus to his son, Diego. All of them bore not just the obligatory cross at the top, but also a strange boat-like symbol in the upper left-hand corner.

With the help of an American Jewish scholar named Maurice David, Wiesenthal deciphered it as two Hebrew characters, beth and hei, standing for baruch hashem, meaning Praised be the Lord. It was, Wiesenthal thinks, Columbus’s way of reminding his son: ‘Do not forget where you come from. The cross is a tribute to the religion you now follow, but within the circle of your family give the sign beth hei, so that they remember their origins.’ In one of the letters, Wiesenthal adds, he discussed with Diego the possibility of marriage to a Marrano.

‘I spent a lot of time in Seville,’ Wiesenthal went on. ‘I had in my hands all his writings that have survived – not just letters, but books he had read, with his jottings in the margins, and books he valued enough to have copied for himself at his own expense: usually by hand, because this was very soon after Gutenberg.4 Now why would you imagine that a Christian sailor five hundred years ago would make a copy of a work by Rabbi Samuel Jehudi urging Jews to accept conversion, even forced baptism? There were just too many coincidences.

‘In all, I find two hundred and fifty references by Columbus to Jews. He knew the Jewish calendar, the Jewish prophets, and his diary showed a deep knowledge of Jewish history. The beliefs of Columbus were a mixture of Christianity and Judaism. In a book of history by Pope Pius the Second, he makes a marginal note that the year 1481’s Jewish equivalent was 5241. He writes that Adam lived to be one hundred fifty years old and, when he tells how the Second Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in the year Seventy by the Romans, he calls it Casa secunda, the Second House. Only Jews use that phrase; in no non-Jewish publication have I ever met this idiom, Second House.

‘But the most important marginal note I find is the one that tells me Columbus knows the diary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled in the east three centuries before him and came to the conclusion that the ten lost tribes of Israel were in “India”. I have this book in my own library. So now I go back to the register of the crew and look a little closer. Not only are there a number of Jewish names, but later I learn that several in Columbus’s crew spoke Hebrew and a couple of them may have been rabbis. And who was the interpreter on board? Luis de Torres, who had been interpreter for the Governor of Murcia, which had a large Jewish population. It took me two weeks to confirm that Luis de Torres had been the governor’s interpreter of Hebrew. Now the only possible explanation of this is that Columbus expected to reach countries in which Jews lived and governed.’

From research on Columbus that began around 1965, Wiesenthal was convinced ‘that the Jews, concerned about their deteriorating situation in Spain,5 were looking for a homeland, a place to flee to, where they would find a protector. And so, in the belief that the ten lost tribes had found refuge in “India”, they financed the expedition of Columbus: a man they could trust.’ Simon says Columbus was surely a Converso and quite likely a Marrano: ‘I am convinced he was following the Law of Moses. But I’m not saying to the bitter end that I’m sure he’s Jewish. I make the matter open.’

Still, when Simon wrote a book-length manuscript that became Sails of Hope: the Secret Mission of Christopher Columbus, he hesitated to offer it to publishers because ‘I feel when I give out that Columbus had a Hebrew interpreter, people will think I am absolutely crazy or else some Jewish fanatic. So I cannot publish the book. But then I have an idea. I was invited to lecture in Lisbon, so I am going to the Royal Library there and looking on the documents of Vasco da Gama, who was also looking for a way to India and really found it.6 He had also an interpreter for the Hebrew language. When I saw this, now I should publish.’

When Wiesenthal’s French literary agent, Charles Ronsac, sold Sails of Hope to six European publishers and Macmillan in America (1973), an editor in the New York office objected facetiously: ‘The Italian Mafia will kill us!’ and Wiesenthal said: ‘After this book is published, all Jews will have three holidays: Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur, and Columbus Day.’

Actually, the only problem came in Spain, where a Wiesenthal reference to three Franco families who sailed to the New World in 1510 was punctuated with: ‘Franco was a common Jewish name in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.’ This did not sit well with the fascist dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892–1975) and Sails of Hope was banned in Spain. Wiesenthal says the reference was no accident and was, in fact, his way of thanking Franco for his reluctance to repatriate Jewish refugees who escaped to Spain during the war.

During my dialogues with Wiesenthal, I wondered what the Hebrew interpreter Luis de Torres, who was the first member of the expedition to set foot in the New World, might have said to the ‘Indians’ when the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria landed in the Bahamas on 12 October 1492: ‘Did he address them in Hebrew?’

‘That I don’t know,’ Simon said, adding deadpan, ‘But I can tell you what the Indians said back to the white man: “Now begins the tsuris.”’"

Behind the Fireplace: Memoirs of a girl working in the Dutch Resistance: by Andrew Scott, Grietje Scott

Most readers are familiar, at least at a minimal level, of The Diary Of Anne Frank. Some of us are familiar with a bit more, with the brave figure that the then teenager - around the same age, and living not too far away - Audrey Hepburn was, in playing her part in the Dutch resistance, and going through horrors personally, despite her family's aristocratic background that made it a voluntary and thereby that much braver an act.

This work fits with those somewhere, in that it's the story of a young girl a few years older than Anne Frank and Audrey Hepburn, living in vicinity of the two - it being after all a small country - and working in resistance, in addition to her family hiding a number of Jews and one resistance member in their home, a highly non trivial act of courage and more, and much, much more. This family was not wealthy as such, had over seven members if thrir own, and at the height of it all sheltered almost as many, hiding them for life and endangering their own. In addition Grietje - called Kieks - aldo delivered nesseges and did much, much more.

As dangerous and as personally sacrificing as it all was, and as traumatic the horrors that she went through, post war years were not a picnic, what with her trauma finding not a whit of sympathy or even recognition in her new homeland, Britain,  when she had married a Brit and was living in Scotland with him and her four children. The psychiatrist whom the husband took her to for help, in fact, decided she was lying and threatened to take her children away, declaring her an unfit mother, if she did not stop insisting her stories of the war years were true. This had a long time devastating effect, of her being forced to shut up, being seen as a liar, and finally breaking up her marriage.

Fortunately her son began to have a clue at some point, and too, authorities in her own country back home recognised her and her family's work in resistance - and most importantly, Israel honoured them. Her son collected and worked through her memories related over time, and managed to write it all into a coherent story after painstakingly working out the timelines.

 One feels the trauma and horror of it all, but more than it all, at the end one feels fortunate in that one could read this and know such brave souls, however much at a distance of time and space.

Unfinished Symphony by Bernard Hellreich Ingram

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Unfinished Symphony 

by Bernard Hellreich Ingram

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The author, a doctor who had qualified from Czechoslovakia and Italy before the war began, and worked as a doctor until the second German occupation of his region - Tarnopol - after Germany went to war against the until then occupying Soviets, survived and lived through holocaust, and was more fortunate than most in thst respect, but saw much that makes a read quite engrossing and worth. 

To quote a summing up of his travails by the author, who lived through holocaust by hiding out with a change of identity - 

""In retrospect, considering the available literature on the monstrous atrocities of the holocaust, my story is one of survival in an idyllic oasis in the midst of a man-made inferno.  To ask for sympathy, or to indulge in self-pity would be an insult to the victims of the concentration camps.  I was, and have been since, immensely lucky, thanks to Providence and to my saviour Kichka, who organised this comparatively melodramatic scenario of comfort, well-being and relative security."" 

At another point, he describes a conversation with a German who discussed with him why Poles were not as friendly with occupying forces as they coukd be, and while the author's identity as a Jew was undisclosed, still, the conversation had to be cautious, yet some things were said that were true enough - 

"Se non e vero e ben trovato.  ("It may not be true but it sounds good.")"

At another point the author describes the jokes that went around, describing the power of humour when a totalitarian regime allows no freedom - here is a good one he quotes - 

"‑ A German Jew escapes from Germany and manages to get to America where he visits his friend Mr Rosenblum in his elegant office.  Behind the desk is a huge picture of Hitler.  "What is that for?" asked the refugee.  "Just in case I get homesick" was the answer." 

And here is an accurate pointing out a wider picture by the author  - 

 

"Hitlerism was born when culture, literature and the arts in Germany were at their peak. Nevertheless, growing unemployment, a progressively deteriorating economy and political chaos, contributed to the creation of a "better", stable Germany, under Hitler's promising National Socialism.  This leads me to believe that in other parts of the world, bad conditions in reactionary, feudal systems when overthrown are usually replaced by modern, pseudo‑civilised, pseudo‑progressive systems which impose harsh, inhuman, repressive sanctions and regulations.

Anarchist and communist inmates of Tsarist gaols, or those in Siberia, were allowed scientific books, had access to good literature which was not anti-Tsarist and enjoyed relative freedom of movement.  In post-revolution years life in Siberian gaols and concentration camps was unbearably barbaric, involving total deprivation of contact with any product of modern culture.  I wonder whether the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea and the attempted destruction of the intellectual, civilised section of their community were intended to take that nation back to the good old days of a primitive and "happy" past."" 

And the post war parts he writes about are just as worth as those during the holocaust years, bringing home the facts about prejudices and unfair practices of other regimes and countries. 

He managed to leave when Poland under a communist regime was getting difficult to say the least, but Australia where he went with his wife was far from easy, and not just because of a difference of language and culture - rather, because of the unfair practices of Australia in particular and British in general that discriminated then as they continue to do pretty much niw, too, against things not quite British, or Australian in case of Australia (although one can bet safely thst Australian prejudices against non Australians do not include British). This unfairness when applied in professional capacity and qualifications is just as devastating to the recipients as those during Nazi regimes against Jews, although Australia covers it by applying the label of "high standards" to justify such prejudices in practice. 

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January 18, 2018. 

Kindle Edition, 191 pages

Published January 3rd 2014 

by Chris Ingram 

(first published December 4th 2012)

ASIN:- B00AHZRESO

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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.