 | Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to penetrate without a shudder those ivory or horned gates which separate us from the invisible world. |  G. de Nerval |
MY BOOK WORLD
Buruma, Ian. Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945. New York: Penguin, 2026.
Just as every holocaust book is a tiny tile that fits into the story of a larger mosaic, so is each story about World War II Berlin. And each one must be told in order for us to see the big picture, to stretch the metaphor. Author Buruma is Dutch, the son of a man, who as a student in Germany, was conscripted as a forced laborer, giving Buruma added weight to his narrative.
Berlin is a historic city, its establishment extending back to the 1300s. For an excellent book on the subject, refer to Alexandra Richie’s FAUST’S METROPOLIS: A HISTORY OF BERLIN (Carrol, 1998). By the end of the war, the city is in shambles from Allied bombing and the Soviet invasion of 1945. Buruma describes some of that history, but his book is mostly about the people of Berlin, and he weaves their stories into a tight narrative of those who fight the Nazis and live to tell the tale.
Many of the stories are about Jewish people, probably because their numbers shrank so. He says, “Of the roughly 160,000 Jews living in Berlin in 1933, only about fifteen hundred had stayed alive in the underground” (337).Buruma reveals that “many artists, in film, theater, music, and literature, had compromised with the Nazis to continue their successful careers” (336). One such person is Wilhelm Furtwängler, a prominent orchestra conductor, who plays at Hitler’s birthday party. Another is an actor, Heinrich George. After the war, George is arrested by the Soviets as “an enemy of the people” (337) for having distributed Nazi propaganda.
Marie Jalwicz is twenty-three when the war is over. Although many urge her to go to America with other Jewish refugees, she prefers to remain in Berlin, East Berlin, in fact. There she studies and becomes a professor of classical antiquity and joins the Communist Party, as well.
These are just three of the dozen or so citizens Buruma follows throughout to tell his story of wartime Berlin. Although very little remains of the historic Berlin, I, for one, would still like to visit there. As with Paris, Athens, Cairo, and Rome, the remains of its former glory still have a great deal to share with us.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Isadora Duncan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Louis-Ferdinand Céline
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Meg Wolitzer
FRI: A Writer's Wit | Melvin Dixon
My Book World | TBD
Just as every holocaust book is a tiny tile that fits into the story of a larger mosaic, so is each story about World War II Berlin. And each one must be told in order for us to see the big picture, to stretch the metaphor. Author Buruma is Dutch, the son of a man, who as a student in Germany, was conscripted as a forced laborer, giving Buruma added weight to his narrative.
Berlin is a historic city, its establishment extending back to the 1300s. For an excellent book on the subject, refer to Alexandra Richie’s FAUST’S METROPOLIS: A HISTORY OF BERLIN (Carrol, 1998). By the end of the war, the city is in shambles from Allied bombing and the Soviet invasion of 1945. Buruma describes some of that history, but his book is mostly about the people of Berlin, and he weaves their stories into a tight narrative of those who fight the Nazis and live to tell the tale.
Many of the stories are about Jewish people, probably because their numbers shrank so. He says, “Of the roughly 160,000 Jews living in Berlin in 1933, only about fifteen hundred had stayed alive in the underground” (337).Buruma reveals that “many artists, in film, theater, music, and literature, had compromised with the Nazis to continue their successful careers” (336). One such person is Wilhelm Furtwängler, a prominent orchestra conductor, who plays at Hitler’s birthday party. Another is an actor, Heinrich George. After the war, George is arrested by the Soviets as “an enemy of the people” (337) for having distributed Nazi propaganda.
Marie Jalwicz is twenty-three when the war is over. Although many urge her to go to America with other Jewish refugees, she prefers to remain in Berlin, East Berlin, in fact. There she studies and becomes a professor of classical antiquity and joins the Communist Party, as well.
These are just three of the dozen or so citizens Buruma follows throughout to tell his story of wartime Berlin. Although very little remains of the historic Berlin, I, for one, would still like to visit there. As with Paris, Athens, Cairo, and Rome, the remains of its former glory still have a great deal to share with us.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Isadora Duncan
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Louis-Ferdinand Céline
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Meg Wolitzer
FRI: A Writer's Wit | Melvin Dixon
My Book World | TBD
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