The German Midwife

The German Midwife  by Mandy Robotham    352 pages

Fans of  “The Alice Network” and “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” are gonna love this debut novel by Mandy Robotham.

 

Anke Hoff is a trained midwife…and a Jew. She is a trained and talented midwife who feels it is her duty to help the pregnant women who arrive in the concentration camp. She has learned not to be hopeful but to be ambivalent to women who ask about their babies’ chances. Chapter One takes place in 1944 in the notorious camp of Ravensburk. It’s heartbreaking to read the pain and suffering these women experienced during labor and what most often happened to their babies. The scenes are rather gruesome, yet realistic/

 

The camp’s guards and administrators know of Anke’s talents.  She is chosen to be the midwife to Eva Braun, who is carrying the heir to the Third Reich.  When she arrives at the Hitler’s mountain retreat, she is given lots of freedoms, but she knows that she if still a prisoner of war. The guards and the servants watch her every move. The only time she feels any real freedom is when she is with Eva.

 

Readers get to experience Eva’s pregnancy, and it begs the question of “What if?’ What if Eva and Adolph Hitler had had a child? And given their end, what would have happened to it?

 

As Eva’s pregnancy slowly and uneventfully progresses, Anke finds herself making friends with her captors and the house servants. She has small, but significant relationships with several of the secondary characters, which adds a second layer to this wonderfully written tale. When Eva does go into labor, there are unexpected complications.

 

Anke is used to making life and death decisions, especially since Hitler’s rise, but her attachment to Eva and others makes for intersting reading.

 

I was surprised by the graphic nature of some of the scenes involving pregnancy, labor and birth. But they are tasteful and appropriate given the nature of this story.

 “The German Midwife”  receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Lilac Girls

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly     496 pages

Debut novelist Martha Hall Kelly spent 10 years researching and five years writing this haunting novel of three women as Hitler begins his mad march across Europe. It is based on the true story of an American philanthropist; a Polish woman incarcerated at Ravensbruck, the female-only Nazi concentration camp; and the only female doctor in that hellhole. “The story is told from three points of view: the victim, the hero, and the villain, together creating a complex picture of an unimaginable time in history” I cannot remember what review I read this sentence in, but it was powerful enough to warrant my writing it down.  The novel begins in 1939 and ends in 1959.

We first meet the heroine. Hundreds, thousands, of people are fleeing France in advance of what they fear will happen: Hitler. Former actress and Broadway start Caroline Ferriday is now a humanitarian, doing her best to help as a volunteer at the French consulate in New York. One of the people who needs her help is French actor Paul Rodierre. Caroline spends her own money sending care packages to French children.

Next we meet the victim, Polish teenager Kasia Kuzmerick. Kasia works with underground, delivering messages. It’s very dangerous work. She is caught and sent to Ravenbruck, where she become one of the “Ravenbruck Rabbits,” women who were subjected to the Nazi SS leader Goerring’s medical experiments. The author was candid about what happened to these women, but did not go into such depth as to make this reader give up on the story. I had a basic knowledge of the experiments happening, but didn’t know any of the details.

Herta Oberheuser is the villain. An ambitious young doctor, she answer an ad in the paper for a government medical position and winds up performing horrendous atrocities on the Ravensbruck ladies. Herta is the most difficult character to understand. In 1939, she is eager to work in medicine, but as the war drags on, she seems almost eager to perform the experiments.

I found the shifting of point of view easy to follow. Well, except that the author did a great job leaving this reader hanging at the end of each section. I was sad to reach the conclusion of Lilac Girls.  I wanted to keep reading about Caroline, Kasia, and Herta. I did, however, read somewhere that Hall Kelly is writing a prequel to this story. I personally can’t wait to get my hands on it. I literally flew through all 496 pages of this book in two days.

I give Lilac Girls 6 out of 5 stars; the highest rating in Julie’s world.