Book review: Those Who Save Us
This book, by Jenna Blum, is an absolute must read.
This book is not subtle. The theme is bluntly stated by Anna, one of two main characters: The past is dead, and better it remain so. Anna came of age in Nazi Germany under the tight rein of an oppressive father and ever-increasing oppression of her Jewish neighbors in Weimar. Next door to Buchenwald. I don't believe she -- like most of her neighbors -- really gets her head around the depth of persecution until her Jewish lover is taken from his hiding place under her father's staircase.
A cold betrays him.
The book is a page turner, and yet you know, you can't help but know, what is going to happen next.
Of course, it's not about what happened, and it's not even about why. (Can any why explain the Holocaust?) It's about what ordinary individuals -- some bright, some reclusive, some like butterflies -- do with the events their lives hand them, what they feel about the other people whose paths they cross, and how they learn to love -- or not.
And it is about survival. Survival of the fittest is a myth. It is a nice model for ecosystems, but the truth is closer to survival of the lucky, the opportunist, the foolhardy, the brave or the misplaced. All of whom appear in this book.
Anna survived because she had no choice. When the Oberstrumfuhrer appeared on her doorstep, she was already dead. She was dead the moment she chose to love a Jewish man -- her participation in the resistance seems only a circumstance falling out of her choice.
But her daughter Trudy was very much alive, and small, and helpless. There is little a mother won't do to somehow give life to her children.
Perhaps the truth is closer to survival of those who can bend and twist and fracture the most while still remaining alive.
And yet, the book is subtle. There are themes within themes, and small portraits of a time and people who've largely been obliterated, yet who may easily evolve again in another country during another war. There is a crisp moment toward the end where Anna's attempt to explain herself to her American husband reminds the reader of the hazy place between polar opposites that we like to think is a crisp line. Love, hate, pride, shame, salvation, death ... under enough pressure do they all become one and the same?
Ms. Blum said "I wanted to create an austere, sepia-toned atmosphere for these characters who dwell so much in memory." She did this, and much, much more.