Seventy years ago on May 8, 1945, the European portion of World War II finally came to an end. By the time I was in a high school history class, twenty-five years later, the presentation of this period was relegated to a series of alliances and dates. That the fathers of classmates were genuine heroes was never mentioned – they moved on to start careers and build families. Others’ parents, grandparents and relatives had fled Europe as the Nazis rose. Some came to the US after the war, bearing emotional and physical scars. That, too, remained unspoken for the most part except possibly in whispers outside the earshot of the children.
So I admit with some embarrassment that it has taken me decades to develop a richer understanding of this period, with all its complexities. The lengthy enumeration of dates and battles that marks many a history tome was a real turn off. It’s the explosion of character-driven historical narratives and well-researched historical fiction that have piqued my curiosity.
In the years immediately following WWII few first-person books dealing with the period were widely read. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s story, was published in English in 1952. Elie Wiesel’s Night, his account of his and his father’s experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was translated from French into English in 1960. These books became the foundation of Holocaust literature, a genre generally thought to include fiction and nonfiction works about the experiences of those killed, enslaved, imprisoned, exiled or hidden as pawns to Hitler and those that risked their lives to save them.
Over the last 25 years, there has been a rush to publish histories and memoirs, historical fiction and allegorical novels, many capturing aspects or periods of the Holocaust experience. Presuming that reading Holocaust literature alone provides an understanding of the entire World War II experience is mistaken. Similarly, avoiding all books describing life and politics of the period creates blinders to far more than Nazi atrocities. A casual reading of front page headlines or a web news site will remind most readers that history, unfortunately, does repeat itself. The titles below shed light on the past, and hopefully will inform our future.
Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, paints a picture of US diplomacy gone wrong and the decadence of the Berlin social scene as Hitler’s rise in Germany accelerates in the mid-1930s. William Dodd, the US Ambassador, was ill-suited for the role of a diplomat, particularly in those times. As Hitler and his followers are gaining a foothold, communications between the State Department and Dodd show a profound misunderstanding of the seriousness of the threat.
Diane Ackerman brought her naturalist’s viewpoint to telling the story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski in The Zookeeper’s Wife. Jan and Antonina, directors and residents of the Warsaw Zoo, turned the zoo into a way station for Resistance members and jews fleeing the Warsaw ghetto and an arms cache for a cell of saboteurs. 
Using Antonina’s diaries and other historical records, Ackerman presents an intimate portrait of a young family which created an elaborate system for protecting its many “Guests” right under the eyes of Nazi leadership. The twisted vision of the Nazis is also examined through the grand plan to reestablish extinct species in the forest outside of Warsaw and the meticulous care of a vast collection of categorized insects while at the same time brutalizing the Jews and subjugating the citizens of Warsaw.
Ruth Gruber, still alive today at 103, was a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune in the 1930s. 
During WWII she became a Special Assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and was chosen in 1944 for a secret effort to bring 1000 Jewish refugees and wounded US soldiers from Italy to the US. The quotas in place prohibited the refugees from permanently entering the country so they were detained in a decommissioned Army camp in Oswego, NY. The story of this effort is told in Gruber’s 1983 book, Haven. The story was also made into a TV movie with Natasha Richardson in 2001. Gruber follows the political machinations required to realize the project and the difficult moral issues associated with bringing refugees into a detention camp with no plans other than to send them back to Europe.
All these titles grab the reader as fiercely as many a novel. Here’s a related list of titles on the BOOKS page. Additional posts on strong historical fiction of the period and learning beyond the page will appear soon.
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Important post. Ellen.