Shadows over My Berlin: One Woman's Story of World War II

Rating:
Summary: In the Shadow of the Holocaust
Review: How much did ordinary Germans know about, or contribute toward, the Holocaust? Hundreds of thousands actively participated, asserts Dr. David Jonah Goldhagen in his controversial book "Hitler's Willing Executioners..." Heidi Scriba Vance does not refute this in her memoir. She was fourteen when she saw firsthand the beginning of the persecution of German Jews, some her neighbors. Soon afterward, her own epileptic aunt fell victim to the Nazi master-plan to rid the State of "undesirables". Then followed her father's training in the Sturm Abteilungen (paramilitary storm-troopers) and her own summons to the Hitler Youth. She disapproved of the Reich's tactics, but as she states: "My talking about [the Jewish Problem] could be dangerous to me and my family... Fear is a great immobilizer." Nonetheless, it is disconcerting to read of Heidi's almost normal continuation of her lifestyle -- dancing, dating, and defying her dysfunctional mother -- while Jews were being rounded up, Allied bombs and incendiaries were destroying German cities, the civilian population was being mobilized for defense, and the fearsome and rapacious "Asiatic Horde" was battling its way inexorably toward Berlin. Indeed, her heinous treatment by the victorious Red Army forms the framework of her memoir: while her "insatiably sexual" Mutti willingly entertains Russian soldiers in her upstairs boudoir, 22-year-old Heidi is repeatedly, forcibly raped on the kitchen floor. Curiously, she survives the horrors of the War with less rancor toward the foreign Enemy than for her closest nemesis, her own mother. Perhaps Heidi considered her fate retribution for the suffering of the Jews, the Russians, and even the ordinary Germans at the hand of Hitler. Or perhaps, truly and simply as she feared, she was powerless to change any of it. When read along with Jewish memoirs of the Holocaust and the historical account of Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle", this memoir provides the unique perspective of a young Berliner during a tragic time.

Rating:
Summary: In the Shadow of the Holocaust
Review: How much did ordinary Germans know about, or contribute toward, the Holocaust? Hundreds of thousands actively participated, asserts Dr. David Jonah Goldhagen in his controversial book "Hitler's Willing Executioners..." Heidi Scriba Vance does not refute this in her memoir. She was fourteen when she saw firsthand the beginning of the persecution of German Jews, some her neighbors. Soon afterward, her own epileptic aunt fell victim to the Nazi master-plan to rid the State of "undesirables". Then followed her father's training in the Sturm Abteilungen (paramilitary storm-troopers) and her own summons to the Hitler Youth. She disapproved of the Reich's tactics, but as she states: "My talking about [the Jewish Problem] could be dangerous to me and my family... Fear is a great immobilizer." Nonetheless, it is disconcerting to read of Heidi's almost normal continuation of her lifestyle -- dancing, dating, and defying her dysfunctional mother -- while Jews were being rounded up, Allied bombs and incendiaries were destroying German cities, the civilian population was being mobilized for defense, and the fearsome and rapacious "Asiatic Horde" was battling its way inexorably toward Berlin. Indeed, her heinous treatment by the victorious Red Army forms the framework of her memoir: while her "insatiably sexual" Mutti willingly entertains Russian soldiers in her upstairs boudoir, 22-year-old Heidi is repeatedly, forcibly raped on the kitchen floor. Curiously, she survives the horrors of the War with less rancor toward the foreign Enemy than for her closest nemesis, her own mother. Perhaps Heidi considered her fate retribution for the suffering of the Jews, the Russians, and even the ordinary Germans at the hand of Hitler. Or perhaps, truly and simply as she feared, she was powerless to change any of it. When read along with Jewish memoirs of the Holocaust and the historical account of Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle", this memoir provides the unique perspective of a young Berliner during a tragic time.