Those Who Save Us
by Jenna Blum
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Description
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph; a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuehrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past show more and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
dara85 This also deals with the Holocaust. The book revolves around secrets that covers two generations.
60
bnbookgirl another novel with nazi/holocaust themes
Member Reviews
As someone who has read several books and seen several more movies on the topic of the Holocaust, and yet still found it intriguing, I was even more impressed by this book. Jenna Blum has crafted a Holocaust tale that, while being historical fiction, has plenty of credibility, and completely plausible. But the especially notable achievement is the sub-genre.
This is a dual story with the original perspectives of an ordinary young German woman and her difficult conditions, told simultaneously with the story of her daughter, who was 3 years old at the time of the her mother's tale. Now in her 50s, she is a German history professor living in Minneapolis. Her mother rarely spoke of the past, so her daughter, Trudy, finds other ways to show more discover it. How about this for a starting point: All Trudy has is an old photograph. Taken during World War II, it is a family heirloom, as it shows Trudy as a toddler, her mother, Anna, and a Nazi officer.
Meanwhile, her mother, Anna, works in a bakery during the war. Few popular accounts exist of viewpoints of regular Germans, so this is particularly enlightening. We read how they experienced poverty, terrible living (and working) conditions, and Nazi ruthlessness & harassment. While their conditions were certainly not comparable to ones of Jews, they were still surprising.
While this is fiction, the plausibility of the work is two-pronged: Ms. Blum is of German and Jewish descent, and she worked for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation for four years.
This book has extra special meaning to me, as it was the first selection in my Temple's annual One Book, One Congregation reading program (in 2007). I highly recommend Those Who Save Us as a book that is original , dramatic, gripping, and insightful.
-Dave show less
This is a dual story with the original perspectives of an ordinary young German woman and her difficult conditions, told simultaneously with the story of her daughter, who was 3 years old at the time of the her mother's tale. Now in her 50s, she is a German history professor living in Minneapolis. Her mother rarely spoke of the past, so her daughter, Trudy, finds other ways to show more discover it. How about this for a starting point: All Trudy has is an old photograph. Taken during World War II, it is a family heirloom, as it shows Trudy as a toddler, her mother, Anna, and a Nazi officer.
Meanwhile, her mother, Anna, works in a bakery during the war. Few popular accounts exist of viewpoints of regular Germans, so this is particularly enlightening. We read how they experienced poverty, terrible living (and working) conditions, and Nazi ruthlessness & harassment. While their conditions were certainly not comparable to ones of Jews, they were still surprising.
While this is fiction, the plausibility of the work is two-pronged: Ms. Blum is of German and Jewish descent, and she worked for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation for four years.
This book has extra special meaning to me, as it was the first selection in my Temple's annual One Book, One Congregation reading program (in 2007). I highly recommend Those Who Save Us as a book that is original , dramatic, gripping, and insightful.
-Dave show less
I've read a fair number of memoirs and other non-fiction about the Holocaust and am always hesitant about reading fiction in this area. After all, the truth is haunting enough without embellishment. But occasionally a Holocaust novel will move beyond the devices of plot and illuminate some fundamental human emotions and questions that are true regardless of whether they actually happened. Arnost Lustig comes immediately to mind as one with the ability to translate his experiences through the lens of fiction and emerge with something even greater. I am reminded in particular of his Lovely Green Eyes. Blum's characters deal with issues that provoke both an emotional response and contemplation. What does it mean to love those who save us, show more or shame us? How do brutal experiences change a person's ability to love or even to remember love? What does it mean to protect your child at the expense of your own soul? Is it possible to find peace if you are denied any possibility of acceptance? show less
As someone who has read several books and seen several more movies on the topic of the Holocaust, and yet still found it intriguing, I was even more impressed by this book. Jenna Blum has crafted a Holocaust tale that, while being historical fiction, has plenty of credibility, and completely plausible. But the especially notable achievement is the sub-genre.
This is a dual story with the original perspectives of an ordinary young German woman and her difficult conditions, told simultaneously with the story of her daughter, who was 3 years old at the time of the her mother's tale. Now in her 50s, she is a German history professor living in Minneapolis. Her mother rarely spoke of the past, so her daughter, Trudy, finds other ways to show more discover it. How about this for a starting point: All Trudy has is an old photograph. Taken during World War II, it is a family heirloom, as it shows Trudy as a toddler, her mother, Anna, and a Nazi officer.
Meanwhile, her mother, Anna, works in a bakery during the war. Few popular accounts exist of viewpoints of regular Germans, so this is particularly enlightening. We read how they experienced poverty, terrible living (and working) conditions, and Nazi ruthlessness & harassment. While their conditions were certainly not comparable to ones of Jews, they were still surprising.
While this is fiction, the plausibility of the work is two-pronged: Ms. Blum is of German and Jewish descent, and she worked for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation for four years.
This book has extra special meaning to me, as it was the first selection in my Temple's annual One Book, One Congregation reading program (in 2007). I highly recommend Those Who Save Us as a book that is original , dramatic, gripping, and insightful.
-Dave show less
This is a dual story with the original perspectives of an ordinary young German woman and her difficult conditions, told simultaneously with the story of her daughter, who was 3 years old at the time of the her mother's tale. Now in her 50s, she is a German history professor living in Minneapolis. Her mother rarely spoke of the past, so her daughter, Trudy, finds other ways to show more discover it. How about this for a starting point: All Trudy has is an old photograph. Taken during World War II, it is a family heirloom, as it shows Trudy as a toddler, her mother, Anna, and a Nazi officer.
Meanwhile, her mother, Anna, works in a bakery during the war. Few popular accounts exist of viewpoints of regular Germans, so this is particularly enlightening. We read how they experienced poverty, terrible living (and working) conditions, and Nazi ruthlessness & harassment. While their conditions were certainly not comparable to ones of Jews, they were still surprising.
While this is fiction, the plausibility of the work is two-pronged: Ms. Blum is of German and Jewish descent, and she worked for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation for four years.
This book has extra special meaning to me, as it was the first selection in my Temple's annual One Book, One Congregation reading program (in 2007). I highly recommend Those Who Save Us as a book that is original , dramatic, gripping, and insightful.
-Dave show less
I have read many novels about WWII and The Holocaust, but none are as gripping and compelling as "Those Who Save Us." Author Jenna Blum worked for 4 years as an interviewer at Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which was established in 1994, by film director Steven Spielberg to videotape the firsthand testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses and make them accessible for educational uses. Ms. Blum also used other sources included in her Acknowledgements at the end of the novel. Many can research, but few can refine the research to become the intense and riveting historical fiction reading experience that Jenna Blum has crafted.
Whether one is in present-day Minnesota with Trudy as an adult and her mother, Anna, or show more back in Weimar, Germany, during the war, the story permeates every fiber of one's thoughts, heart, and soul. Steven Spielberg has taught us about The Holocaust visually, and now Jenna Blum is teaching us with written words, and each provides an extraordinary poignancy of a time in world history that should never be forgotten. I fear that we, as the world, have not learned our lessons well and am deeply saddened that some are not even trying to remember and some are not being taught the lessons of the past. show less
Whether one is in present-day Minnesota with Trudy as an adult and her mother, Anna, or show more back in Weimar, Germany, during the war, the story permeates every fiber of one's thoughts, heart, and soul. Steven Spielberg has taught us about The Holocaust visually, and now Jenna Blum is teaching us with written words, and each provides an extraordinary poignancy of a time in world history that should never be forgotten. I fear that we, as the world, have not learned our lessons well and am deeply saddened that some are not even trying to remember and some are not being taught the lessons of the past. show less
Dr Trudy Swenson is a professor of history at the Univ of Minnesota. After she goes home for her father’s funeral she begins to question her history, and her mother’s silence. She has always know that Jack wasn’t her real father – that he had married Anna and brought her and her daughter from Weimar Germany to the USA after WW2. But the questions about her past will not be silenced, and a research project to record interviews with German survivors of the war forces Trudy to confront her past.
The novel is told in dual timelines: the adult Trudy in 1990s Minnesota, and her mother, Anna, as a young woman in war-torn Germany (1941-1944). The reader is all too aware of Trudy’s past, while watching Trudy struggle to make sense of show more her dreams, her vague recollections, and the one clue she has found among her mother’s belongings.
I was not expecting much from this “book-club favorite;” I’ve been disappointed by so many books that were popular with book clubs. But I’m certainly glad I put my pre-conceived notions aside and read it. I found complex issues, well-developed characters, and a compelling narrative.
Are we doomed to love “Those who save us,” despite their otherwise reprehensible behavior? I was nearly as frustrated by Anna’s obstinate silence as Trudy was. Learning her story, what she felt forced to do to save her child (and herself) gave me some understanding into her character, her motives, her fears, and her reluctance to examine the past. However, my sympathies lie more with Trudy, whose life and potential for happiness is so damaged by the secret Anna refuses to reveal. And I am left wondering whether Jack ever made peace with Anna’s past … and if so, how? show less
The novel is told in dual timelines: the adult Trudy in 1990s Minnesota, and her mother, Anna, as a young woman in war-torn Germany (1941-1944). The reader is all too aware of Trudy’s past, while watching Trudy struggle to make sense of show more her dreams, her vague recollections, and the one clue she has found among her mother’s belongings.
I was not expecting much from this “book-club favorite;” I’ve been disappointed by so many books that were popular with book clubs. But I’m certainly glad I put my pre-conceived notions aside and read it. I found complex issues, well-developed characters, and a compelling narrative.
Are we doomed to love “Those who save us,” despite their otherwise reprehensible behavior? I was nearly as frustrated by Anna’s obstinate silence as Trudy was. Learning her story, what she felt forced to do to save her child (and herself) gave me some understanding into her character, her motives, her fears, and her reluctance to examine the past. However, my sympathies lie more with Trudy, whose life and potential for happiness is so damaged by the secret Anna refuses to reveal. And I am left wondering whether Jack ever made peace with Anna’s past … and if so, how? show less
World War II set stories are among my favorites, and Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum does not disappoint. Trudy has always been bewildered by her mother, Anna, a taciturn woman who refuses to talk about her life during the war. During a research project meant to discover the stories of ordinary Germans who lived through the war, Trudy stumbles across the remarkable story of her own mother, a woman who saved herself and her child from certain starvation or worse, but at what cost? An excellent addition to the genre, Blum’s novel is a haunting exploration of the inescapable moral dilemmas that riddle lives torn apart by war.
Jenna Blum's THOSE WHO SAVE US (2004) is a completely absorbing novel that deals with the camps of the Holocaust on an extremely personal level, specifically Buchenwald. The two central characters are Anna and Trudy, a German mother and daughter, with the narrative shifting between the two, flashing back and forth from the 1940s, with Anna as a young mother in Weimar trying to keep her child safe during the war, to 1997, finding the now adult Trudy teaching German History at a university in Minneapolis, and Anna still keeping secrets about their wartime lives. There is, early on, a love story cut short, followed by a complex, brutal relationship with an SS officer until Buchenwald is liberated by the Americans, and Anna meets Jack, an show more American lieutenant of German descent, a farmer from Minnesota. The story is rich in aurhentic details and strong, well-defined characters. It's a book hard to put down. My highest recommendation.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
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Author Information
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Those Who Save Us
- Original title
- Those who save us
- Original publication date
- 2004-03-02
- People/Characters
- Anna Schlemmer; Trudy Schlemmer; Maxmilian Stern; Horst; Jack Schlemmer; Mathilde Staudt (show all 7); Rainer Goldmann
- Important places
- Weimar, Thuringia, Germany; New Heidelburg, Minnesota, USA; Germany
- Important events
- World War II (1939 | 1945); Nazi Germany; World War II
- Epigraph
- I had voluntarily joined the ranks of the active SS and I had become too fond of the black uniform to relinquish it in this way. -Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz.
- Dedication
- This book is for my mother, France Joerg Blum, who took me to Germany and gave me the key: Ich liebe Dich, meine Mutti. And it is in beloved memory of my dad, Robert P. Blum, who would have said Mazel tov.
- First words
- The funeral is well attended, the New Heidelburg Lutheran Church packed to capacity with farmers and their families who have come to bid farewell to one of their own.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Then the rain sweeps in and it is gone.
- Blurbers
- Lively, Penelope
- Original language
- English
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- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 40
- ASINs
- 11