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 …
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.
Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.
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The writing and characterizations in this book are extremely uneven. Still it is an interesting story for all its flaws. The opening section is clumsy and the ending dreadfully predictable and unrealistic. However, the section set during the war when Anna is mistress to a high ranking Nazi is very well wrought. This is realistic, complicated, …
The way that the author connected the story parts, one to the other was amazing. Beautifully written historical fiction. Shockingly informative and sadly believable.
Horrifying and very difficult to read some of the scenes but based on truth of WWII and what people had to do to survive.
Learned quite a bit of history relating to the Holocaust and the toll on the people that were able to escape from sure and guaranteed death. I also learned that in the world we live in today-many of us probably would not be able to survive much less cope.
This book gave good insight in WWII Germany from a German woman’s experience. The story was well written, the characters’ actions may not always have been admirable but were understandable. I want to read it again to fully absorb and appreciate the book.
My book group loved this book.