The Secretary by Catherine Hoken

 

 

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Two time periods interweave: World War II and Berlin 1989.  

 

Magda works as the PA for an industrialist who looks like an ardent Nazi. She is a resistance worker but her boss shows her there is another way of lessening the effects of the Holocaust. It is more productive and less risky. Several workers are given false identities and marked as essential workers.  There are echoes here of Schindler’s List.

 

Magda takes many risks even so. In addition to the normal work she hides several Jewish families. Her lover is killed.

 

After the war ends Magda lives in East Germany. It is her own granddaughter, Nina, who finds out at the time of the fall of the Berlin wall, when she visits the house in the west where Magda used to live, that her grandmother is hiding many secrets.

 

Magda has made an enemy of her boss’s daughter, Elsa, and that enmity still exists in 1989. Can the truth come out?    

 

The Secretary by Catherine Hokin is fast-paced, particularly towards the end, and for those interested in the era, contains much useful historical material.

More stories, more materials

 

My research for this project has gradually broadened out to include a more general look at the 1940s, both during Word War II and after it, and in both the UK and on the continental mainland, especially in Germany.

Sadly, my father-in-law died suddenly in April and we have been involved in sorting out his house. Many more papers and photos to do with Renate have emerged.

One particularly interesting phot one is of her with her class mates in her final year at the Steiner school. The phot has a list of names so I may research those people a little more.

There are several phots of her when she was still at school and in her late teens early twenties when she first met my father –in-law.

The papers include her description of leaving Germany in January 1939 and about her birth. Naturally the latter comes from the story her mother had told her.

I feel another story coming on: I would like to explore what it was like for a young German Jewish woman, naturalised British, making a life for herself in the late 1940s in London. This one though I would completely fictionalise, even choosing different names for the main characters.

And so it goes on. So it seems I’m alternating writing SF for YA and historical fiction of this era. So be it.

Another two stories planned are:

Helga’s story: the story of another young Jewish woman living in Germany during World War II.

Gabriela’s story: the account of a German resistance worker who happens to be the aunt of one of the girls who joined the class letter.

Never ending? That’s the way we like it!      

Image by Brigitte makes custom works from your photos, thanks a lot from Pixabay           

Marketing a bear

 

I attend a U3A Spanish group and our group leader sends us something to read and discuss each time. We then have to prepare a short talk about something to do with the article we have read. One of our recent topics was the Berlin bear.  It was a little curious discussing something so German in Spanish. We had to prepare something about bears for our talk.

Well, it was rather obvious to me. I would talk about Bear, the brother of the protagonist in Girl in a Smart Uniform.

So, Bear.

·         His real name is Edelbert but Gisela couldn’t pronounce it when she was a little girl. So, he became Bear.

·         He became good at doing things with his hands.

·         He was sporty and athletic.

·         He joined the army more because it was expected rather than because he wanted to.

·         He was ok as a soldier.

·         He was gentler than his older brother Hans, who was anti-Semitic.

·         He had a Jewish girlfriend.

·         He was killed in Russia during World War II.

·         He never knew he had become a father.

Well, I piqued the curiosity of our group leader and she bought the book.  There you go.    

Invisible Ink by Martha Leigh

 

 

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This is an account of a family separated by the World War II and the Holocaust.  It is also the story of a couple who came together despite numerus difficulties.  Martha Leigh tells her parents’ story.  Her mother Edith was an accomplished pianist and her father Ralph was a professor at Cambridge University.

Edith came from the Ukraine but from a town that felt more Austrian than Ukrainian. She spent time in France and Switzerland. She was actually interned in Switzerland but still managed to give concerts.

Her brother and sister-in-law were doctors and were stopped form practising by the Nazis.   However, her brother went on to become a doctor again and specialised in anaesthesia.

Edith and Ralph’s had a long-distance relationship during the war years and Ralph could never love her the way she loved him – he was a homosexual.

This offers us some interesting insight into life in the 1930s and 1940s, and particularly what it was like for Jewish people and for homosexuals.

It’s not an easy read: there are a lot of names to remember, the subject matter is a little harrowing and the tone a little dry. However, it is rich in information and so it is worth persevering.           

More thoughts about Clara Lehrs

 

Was she a victim of the Holocaust? Certainly she mixed with people form the Holocaust.  Or is hers one of the Holocaust survival stories. Although she eventually perished in Treblinka and looked like a victim of the German Holocaust she would  not be defeated by what was being done to her. She was a feisty woman and perhaps she is someone  who defines feisty women.       

She had three fundamental beliefs:    

• human beings are fundamentally good so this nonsense would spot eventually
• she was more German the Jewish
• life is worth living to the full no matter what the circumstance      

 

   Feisty? Mother, wife, housekeeper, landlady - always putting the needs of others before herself.  

  Is her story in fact one of the Holocaust survival stories?

Getting Clara out there and a direct approach

 

I have a fun marketing strategy. I maintain a list of marketing activities that each takes about ten to twenty minutes and I do one a day. I start each month with the book that needs the most sales and work down my list. I adjust the list monthly according to where there has been some success.  Yes, of course, there are always a lot of unknowns. But anyway, Girl in a  Smart Uniform came up on the list as needing to be sent to a random reviewer. So, I’ve offered it to my professional actor friend who played the part of Clara Lehrs when we had a read through of it some months ago. I’m pleased to say she was delighted to be asked. I hope she enjoys it!

I often find that direct approaches like this are fruitful.

I’ve also recently attended, via Zoom, a workshop on adaptation run by the Octagon theatre.  It was certainly interesting and I was delighted that the Octagon then offered to read fifteen pages of our plays. So, fifteen pages of the play version of The House on Schellberg Street are now being read by the good people at the Octagon. It’s a little scary but also exciting. In any case, I wrote the play with their stage in mind.  However, the theatre was totally refurbished just before lockdown began so it may be different now.

We’ll see.            

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay