A few days ago I finished reading Those Who Save Us, 
a novel that examines the gray areas between the victims of the Holocaust and the active perpetrators of the violence and atrocities.
The book is a well-crafted story about a young German woman, mother of a baby whose father is Jewish, who is forced with choices like the ones I described above as she struggles to protect her daughter. It is also the parallel story of the grown child, who struggles herself with the shame and guilt over the SS officer she believes to be her birth father, and what this in turn means for her mother’s actions during the war.
The way the Holocaust is presented in history classes might lead one to believe that it was a direct clash between active evildoers and helpless victims. I don’t feel that I had ever really considered before what it might have been like for someone who didn’t necessarily believe in what Hitler’s government was doing, but who felt intimidated by the massive military forces and didn’t know what to do to fight the powers or help the victims.
It is all too easy to think that, in the shoes of an average German citizen, one would always “do the right thing.” I like to think that when asked to be complicit in a government conspiracy to kill millions of my neighbors, that I would stand up and do something to fight it, too.
However, this book phrases the question in more realistic terms. Would I, if staring down the barrel of a gun or worse, seeing a gun pointed at my child, hide and aid an active officer of death? In my heart, I would never align myself with murderers. In reality, I would do whatever it takes to keep myself and my child alive, doing what I can to aid victims without putting lives at risk.
This is a sad fact, and one I hate to admit out loud.
Nonetheless, Those Who Save Us is an interesting, seemingly well researched and thoughtful look at what life was like for the non-victims. It is structred in flashbacks between the present-day struggles of the adult daughter, and the 1940s story of her mother and her baby self and their struggle for survival. Frankly, I found that the modern struggles with German identity and guilt paled in comparison with the historical struggle to literally stay alive; that said, each story lent perspective to the other and the juxtaposition and intertwining of the stories was an addition and not a subtraction from the story.
It was neat to get to explore the past and the present side by side, the way that early childhood memories played out for the modern protagonist when she was older. As it turned out, the modern character was also an historian of WWII Germany with a focus on critical women’s issues, which allowed for the modern scenes to offer a parsing of the past scenes.
I could not put this book down. It hooked me in both narratives and in the more meta- areas of building an identity in relation to Judaism and the Holocaust, and my interest in gender studies.
I know that there isn’t generally such a thing as being half-Jewish – in conventional wisdom, as far as I can tell, whether inside or outside Judaism people are either Jewish, or not. Typically this thought process applies to people with only one Jewish parent, though I am considering this entirely differently. I sometimes consider myself half-Jewish in the sense that I have a whole pre-established identity separate from the idea of Judaism (though of course even that identity was informed by the presence of Jews in areas of my life… but perhaps this is an aside to be discussed another day), and then a line in the sand after which I began laying the foundations of a Jewish identity that I am building for myself day by day. I have the fortune of being able to choose what I want to be part of my identity, and what is important to me that I want to incorporate into my personal history, but on the other hand this identity-building enterprise is a lot of work and can be overwhelming sometimes.
This work of identity building and self discovery has led to a lot of good things, a lot of research and exploration, and not, I presume, unsurprisingly, the undertaking of a lot of Jewish-themed fiction reading. Reading fiction about the entire spectrum of Jews out there, from the most Reform to the most Orthodox, is at least allowing me some perspective about where my personal beliefs lie and in general a vague idea of what makes people tick.
I read another book recently wherein several supporting characters were Reform Jews, the wife having converted “for the wedding.” This is a common stereotype, but I found that reading this fictional account of a woman who was nearly completely apathetic about Judaism after having actively chosen it, and having it be ‘in name only,’ I found myself feeling very angry.
I should explain. I don’t look down on Jews (hah! like my husband) who are less religious than I am. My position tends to be, “well, who am I to judge?” When I start judging others, I am inviting others to judge me, or at least I am within my own head. But it does irk me to think that there are people who undertake the business of converting to Judaism who don’t value the rich tapestry of heritage to which they have made themselves heirs. It really irks me, even as I refuse to look down on anyone.
In any case, not having all this cultural background in my life, I’m finding this through fiction and forward experiences. I fully recognize that life imitates art imitates life, and I don’t confuse reading for reality. Though it does pass time quite enjoyably, and give my brains a workout.
by Michael Chabon. Another interesting fictional look at Jewish history with a sort of “what would’ve happened if…” twist on it. Jews saturating Alaska? How interesting!