Summer of my German Soldier in Around the World in 80 Books

Jul 26, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: summer

I just thought I was releasing this book at Project Graduation. Instead, the book somehow ended up coming home with me. I read it today. What a powerful story. A young girl, criticized and cruelly treated by her parents, meets a German POW, captured and held captive in a POW camp in Arkansas during WWII. The POW escapes and the girl finds a way to bring him food and water and a safe place to stay. The characters felt intensely real to me and I felt deep compassion for the girl. This would be a g ...more

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Jun 29, 2011 jennifer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Twelve year-old Patty Bergen lives in a small Arkansas town during WWII. Her parents dislike Patty intensely, she isn't allowed to play with the poor children and there aren't many Jewish families in the area, so when her friends go to Baptist camp for the summer, Patty has little to do other than try to help in her parent's department store. Then some German prisoners are brought to a detention camp nearby and taken to buy supplies in the Bergen's store. And when one young prisoner escapes from ...more

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Aug 30, 2015 Lisa of Hopewell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2015

This is the first of the books on my self-assigned “school year” list that I’ve finished. It is so poignant (you likely knew that) and so timely (maybe you knew that, too).

“I wish people would have stood up to Hitler,” I said.

“Some people did, but not many. My father chose acquiescence and life rather than resistance and death. Not a very admirable choice, but a very human one.” (p. 91)

While it is impossible to read those words and not see the death camp images seared into the collective brain o This is the first of the books on my self-assigned “school year” list that I’ve finished. It is so poignant (you likely knew that) and so timely (maybe you knew that, too).

“I wish people would have stood up to Hitler,” I said.

“Some people did, but not many. My father chose acquiescence and life rather than resistance and death. Not a very admirable choice, but a very human one.” (p. 91)

While it is impossible to read those words and not see the death camp images seared into the collective brain of the world, it makes me squirm to read them and think that people are again making life or death choices–not in an organized, systematic way personified by the camps, but one-by-one to convert, to flee, to die. Europe is again awash in refugees–for the too-many-th-time. As I read this story of a Jewish girl not quite seeing things as an adult would–hearing the words, but not knowing them in her gut, I thought of the young people in the camps (and those in the Armenian genocide the proceeded the Nazis), the young people who lived under Pol Pot, or in Rwanda or under Milosivic and…today…the Syrian Christians, the young people trying to make sense in the face of unfathomable cruelty at any time in history. Young people wanting something just their own. Wanting their own sort of justice. To exhibit their own kind of caring.

This was a hard book to read–Patty’s father, the FBI, the times, the town, the injustice done to all Jews, the hard lives of Jews anywhere in America outside a few big cities, the death of “our boys” in the “Good War,” it’s all part of what makes this a hard book–but also what makes it so darned hard to put down.

This book came out when I was in school, but I did not read it way back then in the 1970s. I hope teachers will pull it out, ignore the 70s cover and the Scotch tape holding some copies together–I hope they’ll assign it anew. Let the young feel pain, explore justice and to talk about their own sort of caring. I hope those teachers will have cross-cultural couples come in and talk–old ones, young ones. I hope they’ll have returned Peace Corps volunteers and missionaries come speak. I hope they will show them art work from the camps, music from Rwanda and outrage in all forms of art. I hope they’ll talk about being oppressed in the starkest of terms: When it is choose “us” or die. Oh, yes, Mommies will be self-righteous and object.I’m sure trauma counselors will need to be on-call. Get them now and teach them now. Use this book and others to do it. To teach them to do the right thing. To admire those who do the right thing. To not be afraid to walk in the right.

Note: This book was written before politically correct speech. The N word and a variation thereof are in it. It depicts a time when those words were freely used and a time in which those using it were unconcerned with the pain they inflicted in doing so. ...more

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