To keep remembering the names of Jews tortured and killed during
WWII, a German artist, Gunter Deming, cast cobblestones in bronze
engraved with the names of Jews and embedded these stones outside the
houses where the Jews lived. This story starts with the author
showing the stone outside his wife’s grandfather’s house to his
son and explaining the meaning. It’s a powerful way to start the
story and prepare for the questions it raises.
The story revolves
around Henry Oliver Rinnan, a cruel Norwegian Nazi who set up a
torture chamber is a suburban house where he took Jews belonging to
the resistance. The author tries to see into his mind and answer the
questions of what made an ordinary person turn into a monster. The
other players in the story are the family of Hirsch Komissar. He was
killed during the war. In a surprising twist, one of his sons with
his wife and two daughters move into the house of horrors. Their
story is the struggle to deal with this.
This is a
beautifully written book on an important topic. The world must never
forget the horrors of WWII. The book is divided into chapters each
starting with a letter of the alphabet. The author uses this letter
to provide several paragraphs setting the stage for the rest of the
chapter. For me this device worked well to move gracefully through
five generations of stories.
I highly recommend
this book to anyone interested in WWII. I hope a great many people
will read it.
I received this book
from Knopf for this review.
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