Gudrun Pausewang (1928–2020)

There are a lot of books on the Holocaust but not many of them talk in detail about the actual journeys to the camps, the trains. This book, which is about as low-key as it can be given the topic, is about a twelve-year-old girl, Alice, being deported to Auschwitz, and almost the entire story takes place in the cattle car, packed in with dozens of other miserable Jews. The grimness and inhumanity of the surroundings is quite evident. The wretched people quickly fill their waste bucket and show more finally just eliminate in a corner, and eventually the whole car floods. A nice young man is shot to death when he tries to escape. Although it's not explicitly stated, Alice is sent to certain death in the last chapter of the book. However, more important is the protagonist's journey of self-discovery.

As the train rolls onward to its destination, so does Alice learn more and more things about her life that she never knew. Extremely naive in the beginning -- she was kept shut away by her loving grandfather and was completely unaware of the persecutions and the danger surrounding her -- Alice quickly wises up and realizes the (almost) entire truth of the situation. She begins to menstruate during the last pages, a symbol of her new emotional maturity.

Children would appreciate this book and I don't think it's too graphic for them, but adults will also appreciate it for the many layers of meaning in the story. show less

-It’s just two days to Gisel’s birthday, and her world, like the war effort, is crumbling. Her father is off serving in the German army, while the rest of the family must flee the advancing Russian forces. On their way to safety in another city, Gisel and her brothers are left alone in a crowded train station. Suddenly an air raid siren sounds. The children scramble to find a shelter. Then the bombs hit. Told as a grandmother’s birthday gift to her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Dark show more Hours is an intense novel about fear, despair, as well as responsibility and hope. This is a moving, griping account of war on the non-combatant side. Though refreshing to hear a German perspective, the characters could equally be British, Chinese or Japanese. The innocence and tone of the writing are simply but they hit home in the same way Anne Franke’s diary did. Pausewang’s firsthand experience in the war really makes the text powerful. Remarkable reading. show less

Unfortunately this one didn't quite live up to my expectations. Too much telling rather than showing, and a lot of heavy-handed moralizing. None of the characters are likable or have any depth. The narration is much too simplistic and childish, which makes the handling of the very mature themes clumsy and ineffective. Disappointing.

Deeply unsettling and horrifically plausible. I don't think this is a book to enjoy, but it is most certainly a cautionary tale, the moral being "we reap what we sow." In our post-cold war era we have to a large part forgotten the ongoing threat of nuclear war, it is still there.