A moving, humane biography of a minor Nazi official who did his job without the usual horrors.
Discovering that his grandfather was a Nazi imprisoned for war crimes, the author explores his life.
Bilger, a veteran staff writer at the New Yorker, knew that both of his parents lived in World War II–era Germany, moving to the U.S. in 1962. Grandfather Karl, released after the war, resumed life as a schoolmaster until his death in 1979. Despite family visits, the war was rarely discussed. “Like most Germans her age,” writes the author in this powerful investigation of morality, his mother “talked about [the war] as she might tell a sinister fairy tale: in rough, woodcut images, black and white gouged with red.” Matters changed in 2005 when she received a package of letters from the village where Karl was stationed. The author traveled to Europe repeatedly, researching archives and interviewing villagers, and the result is a vivid portrait of his grandfather and his times. Karl lived in the Black Forest in the southwest, a region that was overwhelmingly Catholic and rural. It had no industry and few Jews, and it remained mostly impoverished until well after 1945. Born in 1899, Karl was drafted in 1917. A year later, he “lost his eye in the Ardennes,” and he spent the interwar years as a village schoolteacher. After Germany’s conquest of France, he was sent to a town in neighboring Alsace to teach French children to be loyal Germans. In 1942, he was promoted to local Nazi Party chief. In four years of German occupation, no one from his town was sent to concentration camps, and “no families were deported, no political prisoners executed.” This did not prevent him from suffering when the French returned with vengeance in mind. Kurt was imprisoned off and on for over two years and only released after a trial in which a crowd of townspeople testified in his defense. A fluid writer, Bilger crafts a fascinating, deeply researched work of Holocaust-era history.
A moving, humane biography of a minor Nazi official who did his job without the usual horrors.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780385353984
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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