The German House

Illustrates how Germany tried to forget what the Nazis had committed. Very interesting read.

Compelling story. It's true to life in how Germans and Poles alike dealt with the Holocaust whether it be denial, hate, shame, or complicity.

As a fan of historical fiction mostly centered around WWII, this story revealed something from the other side, the German people and the aftermath of the Nazi regime there. Who could not have known? How could the people just not know what was happening in their own land? How do you hold a nation accountable and who pays for it?

A perspective on the holocaust that unfolds through emotions and facts. The impact on both those who suffered the cruelty. The hardened lies by those who delivered the cruelty. And then those who knew but did nothing ..: and their whys. The final truth at the end of story leaves one helpless and powerless. Recommend.

I thoroughly enjoy the way Hess writes, as translated by Lauffer....but I reached the end and think I may have missed or misunderstood something about the relationship between Eva and Jurgen but as the translator explains in a note....memories cannot always be trusted. Relationships are the foundation of this very moving novel----between Eva's parents and between Eva and her parents, as well as between Eva and her sister. There are so many layers to this ---Jurgen and his father, Jurgen as his idea of a wife, based on what? Yes, practially a page turner of a book----very, very absorbing.

In this newly translated debut, Eva takes a job as a translator for what turns out to be the case brought to trial against a group of SS officers that worked at the death camps during WWII. Set in the 1960's, this novel reminds us that history plus time allows for the distance to forget & secrets always find a way to work themselves free.

I liked it. It wasn't a real WOW... but such a different look at WWII's aftermath.
Sometimes a bit flat, but it is a translation so maybe that had something to do with it.

This would be a great book for a discussion! The main character has to face some hard truths- I'm still conflicted.

Eva is asked to translate for Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt in 1963. Her parents run a restaurant, and she has a posh boyfriend. She's hoping Jürgen will propose. The trials affect her: she learns about the horrors of the camp as she translates the witnesses' experiences. Hess uses the real trial evidence in the book. Those accused follow the standard defence: they deny they were there, suggest dates were wrong, that they had no responsibility etc. Eva is gradually overwhelmed by what she translates, but finds that her family want to deny everything. She has strange childhood memories that she can't explain, and meets a young Canadian lawyer for the prosecution who takes the case personally.Hard-hitting account of attempts to deny the Holocaust after the war.

Thank you in advance to Bookish First and Harper Via for the ARC to review. A positive review was not required and all words are my own.

Deciding to broaden my literary tastes, and try new genres, one such fascinating period is World War II. And, having read previous World War II/Nazi/Concentration Camp books, such as “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”, “Cilka’s Journey”, “The Lilac Girls” – “The German House” provided a different perspective. I claimed it with points through BookishFirst and eagerly awaited its arrival.

First off – this book does not have chapters, unless in the final edit they add them. Right now, from what I am reading – there are no chapters. The book is told in third person POV over four parts. This seems to be a common complaint among some reviewers. And, is one of my BIG ones.

Taking place in 1963, during the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, 24 year old Eva Bruhns finds herself as a translator during the trial. Her parents own, manage, and operate a restaurant called “The German House”.

At first Eva is reluctant to take on the task. Shesoon finds herself in the middle of the trial unable to walk away. She’s also engaged to Jürgen Schoormann, a wealthy businessman who doesn’t want Eva involved and goes to great lengths to prevent her involvement. Those closest to her tell her the atrocities were lies because there was a general disbelief they could happen. But, as she learns more, she wants to see the trials through to justice in post World War II Germany.

She also learns about her family’s own involvement at Auschwitz and is disturbed by it.

What starts off as a promising story – Germany’s reluctance to hold themselves accountable for the Holocaust – this novel falls flat in the delivery. Extremely flat. Either it is the author or the novel was badly translated since it was originally published in Germany. Most of the story centers more on Eva’s personal life – with Jürgen and/or her own family, along with the day-to-day operation of the restaurant. The relationship between Eva and Jürgen was flat and shallow. After her “enlightening” I couldn’t see what she saw in him.

Another plot in this book involves Eva’s sister Annegret, a nurse at a local hospital, who works in the labor and delivery department. The story line involving her is unneeded and very disturbing since it was of a criminal nature. I didn’t see what the point was in having it in there as it didn’t connect, in my opinion, to the theme of the book. It felt disjointed and out of place.

Also interesting was the story line involving one of the prosecutors, a Jewish man by the name of David Miller. His story line “end” is quite disturbing as well and I was left wondering what the point was of that ending. Also, Eva’s interaction with one of the camp’s “residents” at the end of the book was perplexing and left me again asking “why”. It was refreshing to see she was the only character with progression in that she had been changed by the trials.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the ending and how Eva’s family’s involvement played into all of it. The title of the novel had, to me, nothing to do with the plot line. It was simply the name of the restaurant.

I was surprised and not surprised to see the lack of outrage over what happened during the reign of the Nazi regime.

Yes, this is an uncorrected “proof” (ARC, Galley), but the choppy writing in this novel made it a bit hard to follow. There is a lack of proper scene transition going from one scene to another in practically the next sentence. It seems to bounce all over the place without a proper segue. At times it seemed to ramble on, almost incoherently. Again, I don’t know if that is the writing or the translation. It made it difficult to take a break from the book then come back to it.

The attempt to show that lack of outrage as well as the “let’s just move on” point of view was admirable. I do credit the writer for attempting to present the point of view she tried to.

I honestly hate giving books bad reviews. I know how I’d feel if I brought something to life only to have it decimated by someone who didn’t appreciate what was put into it.

However, since honesty counts – and, I’ve found a few similar reviews – I have to say this was okay, but disappointing. I definitely wouldn’t

If you’re on the fence with this – I recommend getting it from the library first. It is worth a read, if only once to get the other perspective. It’s not one I personally would buy or likely read again.

Eva Bruhns, is a young woman who becomes a translator for the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials in 1963. She doesn’t remember the war and looks forward to marrying her finance and starting her own life. But as the trials continues, she learns more about her family’s past and their involvement during the war.I really wanted to enjoy this story, as I am of German descent and my mother and grandmother lived not far from Frankfurt. The premise was intriguing but the book dragged on and the characters were not sympathetic. With no chapters, it just continued on and on with no real structure to the story. Did Eva learn anything or evolve because of what she learned? I’m not sure. Disappointed.

I was interested to read this book since I wasn't very familiar with the Auschwitz Trials. Though the trials are a key part of this book, the focus was not on the trials so much as on the way Eva's participation as a translator changed her relationships with everyone she held dear.Overall this was an interesting read, but I do have a couple complaints. I couldn't figure out why a whole storyline was devoted to Eva's sister. It seemed unrelated and was just strange. I wasn't a fan of Eva's love story either. What did she see in Jürgen? They seemed really mismatched, couldn't communicate well, and in general didn't seem to enjoy each other's company. I'm not sure how I felt about the ending, either.Thank you BookishFirst for the review copy of this book.

It is 1963, and in Frankfurt twenty-four-year-old Eva Bruhn is living at home with her parents, her elder sister Annegret, a paediatric nurse and her much younger brother, Stefan. Home is an apartment above The German House, a restaurant owned and run by her parents. Eva has few memories of WWII and her home city, which was left so badly bomb-damaged at the end of the war, is now prospering. Her dreams are focused on wishing for the day when her rich boyfriend, Jürgen Schoormann, will ask her father’s permission to propose to her, thus enabling her to move away from her family to start married life.When the story opens she’s working as a Polish language translator for an agency, dealing mainly with contracts and business disputes. However, her rather mundane life, along with all her plans, are turned upside down when Canadian investigator, David Miller, approaches her to temporarily stand in as a translator in a war crimes trial. However, the first time she attempts to translate what a witness is saying she struggles to find the right words to describe what she is hearing and makes a number of mistakes which change the essential meaning of what he has said, so David has serious doubts about her competence and is reluctant to employ her again. However, as there is no alternative interpreter available, he reluctantly does so, but she is told that she must quickly learn the appropriate vocabulary. When she hears that this will include learning “every conceivable word for how to kill a person”, she gets her first chilling insight into the nature of the testaments she will hear during the trial. Neither her parents nor Jürgen want her to accept the position but, once she has realised the importance of what must be brought to light, she refuses to let them persuade her to turn the job down. She soon realises that everything she hears will challenge all her previously held beliefs and will change her life completely.At the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, which began in December 1963, twenty-two defendants were charged, under German law, for crimes committed when they were SS officers at the camp. It is against this background that the story is set, following the naïve Eva as she gradually comes to learn of the almost incomprehensible magnitude of the horrors which were perpetrated in that camp. As she translates the testimonies of the succession of witnesses, her passion for seeing justice done and her desire to see the guilty be held to account for the crimes they committed increases. As a result, she struggles to understand her parents lack of interest in the trial, and their reluctance to talk about what they did during the war. Their determined avoidance makes her increasingly wonder just what it is they are hiding.Eva also discovers, through the reactions of neighbours and some aspects of the media coverage, that her parents aren’t the only ones who think that there is nothing to be gained from the trial. There is a commonly held belief that whatever might have happened in the past, it should now be left there, that nothing could be gained from raking up old – and possibly false – memories. Her own conscious memories of her very young childhood are vague but, as the trial progresses, disturbing, dreamlike memories become ever-more vivid and she wonders what they signify. Memory, and the reliability, or otherwise, of an individual’s memory is a recurring theme throughout the book and I found this one of the most thought-provoking aspects of the story, especially as this is something with which we are all familiar, in the reporting of historic sex-abuse trials. I loved the character of Eva and felt moved by her transition from being a rather naïve young woman, with limited aspirations, to being someone who was prepared to confront the past, and to stand up for what she believed in. Although she was portrayed as being prepared to act against the wishes of her family, and her boyfriend, at a time when such independence of thinking and behaviour was not the norm, there was never a moment when I found it difficult to believe in the credibility of her characterisation.As well as Eva, I thought that each of the other characters was convincingly portrayed, with not one of them feeling superfluous to the developing story. Instead, the author’s depictions of their individual struggles to come to terms with past experiences, with current relationships and with everyday concerns, added layers of depth and enabled an exploration of a whole range of different attitudes and expectations. It’s difficult to go into any detail about what all these other characters bring to the story without spoiling the carefully controlled development of the various sub-plots, so I urge you to read this remarkable story in order to discover for yourself! Questions about how much “ordinary” people knew about what was going on at Auschwitz, and about all the other atrocities being carried out during the Nazi regime, threaded their way through the story, challenging any claims to innocence through ignorance because it’s inconceivable that, given the scale of the imprisonment and slaughter, this could have occurred in a vacuum. The story also explored how those who were children during the war coped when they came to understand what had taken place, when they perhaps discovered that their own relatives had played a part, either by participating in the atrocities or by “turning a blind eye” to what was going on. It’s impossible to read a story like this without asking “what would I have done if I had known, or suspected what was happening, would I have been courageous enough to put myself, and my family, in danger by taking action to challenge the authorities?” However, it’s complacent to think that this questioning belongs in the past, that nothing so appalling could possibly happen today. It’s all too easy to think of any number of modern-day examples of the world still being prepared to look away, even when confronted with evidence of persecution and torture, and of minority communities being displaced. As the eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke observed … “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.This is one of the most profoundly moving stories I’ve ever read and is one which I know will remain vivid in my memory for a long time to come. Even though I learnt nothing new about what happened in Auschwitz, that in no way diminished the horror of both the nature and the scale of the atrocities which were perpetrated, and of such overwhelming evidence of “man’s inhumanity to man”. I frequently found myself in tears as I read the harrowing accounts of what the survivors and their relatives had endured, the doubts which were so frequently expressed about the veracity their memories, and therefore the veracity of their testaments. Equally moving was following Eva’s distress as she realised what had happened in her country, her own family’s part in this, and then her passionate determination that the guilty should be brought to justice and that the world should listen, believe and atone. This is an assured, beautifully written debut novel and I’m left feeling in awe of the author’s ability to combine her meticulous research into her story-telling and her cast of, mostly fictional, characters. (In her author’s note she explains how she approached this balancing act.) I think the fact that she is, amongst other things, an award-winning screenwriter, contributes to the story being such a powerfully visual one. Whether she was describing the courtroom scenes, everyday activities in the Bruhn household, Stefan playing with his toys or his little dog, service in the restaurant, or the countryside, I felt totally immersed in each scene, able to hear, see, smell and feel everything that the characters were experiencing. But, powerfully evocative as I found so much of the story, the final paragraph of Part3 had the effect of “stopping me in my tracks”. This marked the end of a visit the members of the trial team had made to Auschwitz. During their time there they had seen for themselves the conditions the victims had had to endure, had stood in the same places the victims had stood, followed the same path through the woods to the gas chamber where the victims had experienced their last moments on earth and, as they sat in the open air, reflecting on all this, they were speechless, reduced to tears. When Eva, who had been going to record the events of the day in her diary, later that night, reflected “that there were no words for this”, I was not only in floods of tears, but I also empathised completely with what she meant. And yet, words do have to be found because the world must never be allowed to forget what happens when evil is enabled to thrive. Although there are many ways in which this is an extremely sad and disturbing story to read, I feel it’s important to say that it is not without some delightful moments of lightness and humour, many of which are provided by the mischievous young Stefan and Purzel, his pet dachshund!A final reflection: although I did wonder, when I first started reading, how I would feel about the lack of conventional chapters (the book is divided into four parts … and in Part1 the first natural break doesn’t come until p49!) it wasn’t long before I hardly noticed the format because, feeling so engaged with the story I felt no desire whatever for any interruption to the narrative!With thanks to NB and LibraryThing for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When I first saw this historical fiction book was about the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963 I knew I had to read it. Even though I have read many historical fiction and nonfiction books about World War 2, I don't often read books that explore the postwar years. The aftermath of the war is something I'm thankful the author deemed worthy of writing about as this was a fascinating read for me.It's 1963 and Eva Bruhns is twenty-four years old and living with her family in Frankfurt. Given her young age during World War 2, she really doesn't have many memories of that time period. She is working as a translator and is hoping her wealthy boyfriend, Jürgen Schoormann, will soon propose marriage. A man named David Miller wants to hire Eva as a translator for an upcoming war crimes trial, and that doesn't sit too well with Jürgen. Eva is horrified at what she learns at the trial and it weighs heavily on her mind.Eva is the main character and heart of the story but you do get the opportunity to get into the minds of the other characters as well. Near the beginning of the book, it was slightly jarring when you would be following one character and then without any warning it just bounced to a different character. This was something I adapted to fairly quickly, however I could see how the disjointed transitions might drive other readers nuts.I felt like there were two parts to the story. You have the trial which goes into detail about the atrocities of the war, and specifically what took place at the Auschwitz concentration camp. But the other compelling part of the story was Eva. I don't want to get into specifics about the plot and get into spoiler territory but I thought the author did a good job showing the attitudes and mindsets of the people in Germany during that time period. I lived in Germany for a few years not that long ago and actually lived not too far from Frankfurt. And I'll admit that might be part of the reason I was so into this story as in my mind I kept thinking about the differences between that time period and now. One of the more interesting things I learned while living there was it is mandatory for Germany students to learn about the Holocaust in school and many are required to tour a concentration camp or visit a museum so they can learn about the horrible things that occurred so it may never happen again.The only small criticism I have of the book is in my opinion Annegret's storyline wasn't entirely necessary. I would though be willing to change my mind if I ever found out the author's reasons for including it. Some more context would probably help.Highly recommend reading especially if you are a frequent reader of World War 2 historical fiction.Thank you to the publisher and BookishFirst for sending me an advance reader's copy! I was under no obligation to post a review here and all views expressed are my honest opinion.