THOSE WHO SAVE US

by Jenna Blum

Many readers have read a variety of books on World War II: its soldiers, battles, atrocities, and hardships. This book, by a new author, combines a plot that moves between past and present, guilt and innocence. We, the reader, are forced to continually morally evaluate the characters of this wrenching story of a grim reality faced during a horrible time by Jews and the German Resistance who tried to help them.

The author tells the story from two perspectives: Anna Schlemmer who for fifty years refuses to talk about her life in Germany during World War II; and her daughter, Trudy Swenson, a professor of history at a small college. Because of a colleague’s Holocaust Study, Trudy begins a German Project. This project is designed to give voice to the Germans who lived through World War II. As Trudy begins her investigation of the past, she finally unearths the heartbreaking truth of her mother’s life.

We view Anna’s life before, during and after the war. A life she never shares with her daughter or anyone but the reader. Trudy who came with her mother, at age three, to America when her mother married an American GI, finds a photo of herself, her mother, and a Nazi officer. Thus, the German Project begins her own search for answers not only for herself but also her mother.

This book is a disturbing and profound exploration of what can be endured in order to survive and the legacy of shame that is left. Jenna Blum is of German and Jewish descent. She worked for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation for four years interviewing survivors.

This book was very compelling. Ms. Blum’s characters are deeply drawn with human flaws and weaknesses, yet strength and integrity. Continually the reader holds the character to a moral mirror and evaluates. “What would I have done?”

(by Anne Frame, Guest Columnist)