02 Apr Those Who Save Us
Those Who Save Us, WWII Book by Jenna Blum
(2004) The author, Jenna Blum, is of German and Jewish descent. She worked for the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation for four years, interviewing Holocaust survivors. Once I learned this I knew I had to read the book. One of the two main characters is a professor doing similar interviews, and I know the harrowing stories were inspired by real events.
I read about 50 pages each night, looking forward to the next session, then finished the last 100 pages last night. All the while I have been reading it, I have been thinking of the German women left behind in the cities with their children, trying to survive the hunger, the bombings, the brutalities, the impossible choices. This is the story of a mother and her daughter, both struggling with their memories of those terrible years.
The German location is the city of Weimar, very close to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In fact, the two characters Anna and Trudie are among the citizens of Weimar as they are forced by the Allies to march to the camp and bury the dead.
As I was researching that incident, I found that Billy Wilder directed a 1945 documentary for the U.S. Government titled Death Mills. You can watch it on the Holocaust Memorial Museum website. Toward the end you can see the citizens of Weimar as they go through Buchenwald. It’s excruciating to watch even after so many years.
In the first few pages, I realized that the author wasn’t using quotation marks when someone spoke. At first it was a little confusing but I soon got used to it. I was surprised by the ending. Suddenly everything came together, just like that. I was left wishing it could have been true …
Those Who Save Us at amazon.com
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