Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum – 479 pages

Book Blurb:

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy’s sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother’s life.

My Review: 5 stars

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I have very few reviews on my site for books I read prior to 2011, however when Jenna Blum became my friend through social media, it reminded me of how much I loved Those Who Save Us. I decided to revisit her book and post the review. What makes this book different from the many Holocaust and WW2 books around is that it’s told from the POVs of a German woman whose child was fathered by a Jewish man in the 1940’s, and also the aforementioned child, 50 years later in the US, trying to discover her mother’s hidden past. What this woman does to save both herself and her daughter are often unthinkable as she is both emotionally and physically abused. Secrets are buried deeply for this character and the price for remembering them exposes her private guilt. As dark as those moments in the book were, the author balances it out with good dose of hopefulness, which keeps the pages turning. The theme inspired by the title runs deeply through many of the characters’ relationships and asks that ultimate question, who can save us?

Quotes I liked:

She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame.”