Book Blog: Those Who Save Us - Jenna Blum

I am glad I picked this book up at the used book store. I actually heard the author speaking on the radio the other day and was excited because I was in the middle of her book. She had enormous success with this book, especially in book clubs, and I see why. This is the story of a mother and daughter that lived in Germany during WWII. It switches back and forth between the mother Anna's life at the start of the war, during, and shortly after the war, and the present (1997) life of the daughter Trudy. Trudy as an adult is a history professor and begins a research project to learn about the lives of Germans during the war. She knows that she and her mother were there at the time, but has very little memory of their experiences. Unfortunately her mother cannot let go of the memories, nor will she speak of them. While much of this book is heartbreaking, I enjoyed following Trudy's discovery of German life at wartime and the discovery of her mother's secrets.

Another reason I liked this book is because the latter sections are set in Minnesota and places described in the book are familiar to me. Not many books or movies are set in Minneapolis, so it was fun to read it and be able to picture the locations and the weather conditions.

I have not really studied much about WWII since high school, with the exception of my history class in France, but that was brief and mostly French focused. With the Holocaust being the most talked about topic from the war, I had not spent much time thinking about what life was like for non-Nazi Germans at the time. Many people blame them for standing by and not doing anything to stop the atrocities, but this book gives insight into the lives of women particularly who simply were just trying to survive and protect their children. There were those who helped hide Jews, provide food to the camps, etc. but those people and others were put in impossible situations where they sometimes had to choose staying alive vs starving to death or being shot point blank in the face. It's easy to say that you would choose the "right" thing, but would you really be able to when put in that situation?

After reading this book I did gain a new perspective on the time and the effects it had on the German population, as well as the Jewish population. Reading the account of Anna's view of the concentration/work camps from the outside is terrifying without even thinking about what was happening on the inside. Today, I visited the El Paso Holocaust Museum to continue my exploration of the subject. The museum is very well constructed and informative, I recommend it if you're in the area. I am thankful that I did not live in that time period, and I pray that nothing as horrible as the death of 11,000,000 innocent people ever happens again.