Those Who Save Us in Crazy Challenge Connection

Feb 26, 2016 Book Concierge rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, minnesota, library, concierge, strong-women, world-war-ii, germany

Dr Trudy Swenson is a professor of history at the Univ of Minnesota. After she goes home for her father’s funeral she begins to question her history, and her mother’s silence. She has always know that Jack wasn’t her real father – that he had married Anna and brought her and her daughter from Weimar Germany to the USA after WW2. But the questions about her past will not be silenced, and a research project to record interviews with German survivors of the war forces Trudy to confront her past.

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Dec 30, 2009 Sue rated it really liked it

Shelves: wwii

Grim. Disturbing. Thought-provoking. This book makes the reader really think about many questions. Can a person be a hero and a collaborator at the same time? Do desperate times really justify any actions to survive? Is there any limit to what a mother will do for her child? What is the burden of silence? Is it redemptive to share all or just self-aggrandizing? Anna has never told anyone of her heroic and desperate life during WWII in Weimar, Germany. She endured more than a person can be expect ...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Khim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

Eerlijk gezegd snap ik niet dat dit boek zo populair is en bijna een hype. Het boek is altijd uitgeleend bij de bieb en er zijn heel veel reserveringen voor. Het is een goede roman, gebaseerd op verhalen uit de holocaust. Jenna Blum heeft zo haar eigen verhaal gemaakt van deze verhalen. Het is wel boeiend geschreven, maar het lijkt net alsof je in een achtbaan zit, dan zitten er lange saaie stukken in waarin je bijna van in slaap valt en dan is er weer een interessant stuk dat je toch weer wilt ...more

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