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Wildflowers Of Terezin (2010)

by Robert Elmer(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1426701926 (ISBN13: 9781426701924)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Abingdon Press

review 1: This is an amazing book about Nazi concentration camps and how it affected the lives of Jews and others who heroically tried to save them in WWII. A very touching love story about a young preacher who will do anything for the Jewish nurse he has fallen for. The ending was quite surprising! I loved the thoughtful and inspirational quotes the author used at the beginning of each chapter (some by Anne Frank, Mother Teresa, etc.)
review 2: Set in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1943. As it opens, we see nurse Hanne Abrahamsen awakening from a dream in which a man who looked like Hitler announcing at her graduation that she was a Jew. At this time, the Germans were occupying Denmark and being known as a Jew was exceedingly dangerous. In some ways, this was a "Number the S... moretars" for adults. It told the story of the Holocaust primarily through the developing relationship of Lutheran pastor Steffan Petersen and Jewish nurse Hanne Abrahamsen. Even though the romance is allowed to advance throughout the novel, it in no way upstages the realities of the German Occupation of Denmark and the brutal Nazi treatment of Jewish people. Prior to Steffan's meeting Hanne, he had been perfectly comfortable staying in his church delivering the same tired old sermons that he had delivered in the past. While his younger brother was actively involved in the Resistance, Steffan basically took a live and let live attitude towards the German occupiers. As the book unfolds, Steffan is not truly sure if it is a deeper understanding of his pastoral calling or his deepening love for Hanne that is beginning to make him no longer able to ignore the plight of the Danish Jews. While this book is not graphic in its details, it ensures the reader understands the depth of the brutality visited upon the Jews by the Nazis. This book heralds the bravery of many Christian Danes on the behalf of their Jewish fellow citizens while also ensuring the reader understands that some Danes remained simply indifferent as Steffan originally had been. It also notes that there were those Danes who were German collaborators. In the Afterword, Elmer gives some nice notes detailing some of the pieces of historical fact upon which this excellent book was based. I strongly recommend this book even to those who do not normally choose historical fiction. The plot moves swiftly, the characters are believable, the descriptions paint clear mental pictures, and the text provides more than a little food for thought. less

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