FFB & #GermanLitMonth: My Father’s Keeper: The Children of Nazi Leaders – An Intimate History of Damage and Denial

Because sometimes there are stories -even in an atheistic world - that do not end with the passing of the protagonist. Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess... I think all of us have heard of these names. Then there were others whom I encountered for the first time: Hans Frank, Baldur von Schirach, Martin Bormann, …

Diseased Society: Dan Vyleta’s The Quiet Twin

Vienna. 1939.The Second World War has started, Austria is part of the German Reich, and the times are full of danger.Dr. Beer is called to examine the niece of Professor Speckstein, Zuzka. The professor is supposed to be a Nazi spy and his dog had been brutally killed a couple of days ago. Even as …

His Father’s Thoughts: John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Little Bruno's world changes when he shifts from Berlin to a place called Out-With as his Father has been posted over there. But what exactly his Father does,Bruno has little idea. All he knows is that his father was a man to watch and that the Fury had big things in mind for him and …

‘The Issue itself": Present Day Germany and the Nazi Past in The Reader

Sometime I think that dealing with the Nazi past was not the reason for the generational conflict that drove the student movement, but merely the form it took. Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it …

Growing Up (with books) in Nazi Germany: The Book Thief

The stars set fire to my eyes...Usually I avoid reading books set in Nazi Germany because in the guise of Nazi bashing there is a blanket basterdization of ordinary Germans - people caught on the wrong foot in the march of history.It was with this trepidation that I started The Book Thief. Had heard a lot about …