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The English German Girl. Jake Wallis Simons (2011)

by Jake Wallis Simons(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1846971764 (ISBN13: 9781846971761)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Polygon

review 1: A well-written novel from the perspective of a young Jewish girl growing up in Hitler's Berlin, this really engaged me. Rosa's father at first refused to believe they needed to leave Germany, and by the time he accepted it (after being arrested and held in prison for several weeks), it was getting harder and harder to get visas to leave. Finally her parents put 15 year-old Rosa on the Kindertransport train to England in the hope she would be able to get them a visa to go to England once she was there. The balance of the story is about Rosa's life in England, where she ultimately trains to be a nurse in war-time London. The author obviously did a lot of research, and like good historical novels, it made me want to read more about this period.
review 2: I have su... morech a weird tendency to read a book that happens somewhere in the world just before I head to that somewhere.And so, just as Rosa found herself in London, I was boarding a plane to London.It wasn't even intentional, it was just on my read list for a while and I get home to Israel to see that my dad bought a copy.I loved reading it while on the tube and finishing it 10 minutes after take off to JFK.I don't want to say much.Part of the point of this story is that you keep hoping, and some times something good happens,and sometimes something horribly bad.Because it's a holocaust novel, and you can't run away from the reality of this fiction that is somewhat based on reality.I'll say this - you go from Berlin to Germany, you like the colorfulness of the life before the war of this family, and the courage of Rosa after the war starts. She's a teenager when she is sent away, and so, her entire adolescents happens during the war. She grows up because of the war and because she's in the age to grow up, but you can't help and imagine how her life would look like under other circumstances. The last few chapters are so emotional, tied well together, and takes me back to my trip to Poland. The concept of some of this things are so surreal, so hard to fathom, but sometimes you break it own and your head, and something clicks, and it hits you so hard.This is a story about a courageous girl under interesting circumstances. Gives you a glimpse of life in Berlin before the war, and in England during.Makes you even think about religion and what's the meaning of it in a place god isn't present. less

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