The burning of books in Berlin in the 1930s is perhaps one of the lesser known atrocities of the Nazis. Many of the greatest writers in the world were considered not pure German and their works, therefore, were burnt in a great pyre in a square in Berlin. Today one can visit the site where it occurred, and see a glass window in the paving which is a memorial to this act of vandalism.
Kathryn Lasky takes the rise of Adolf Hitler and the increasing power of the Nazi Party leading to the book burning, as the background to the story of 13-year-old Gaby, second daughter of an eminent professor of astronomy and and a music teacher. Her father is a friend of Albert Einstein. This novel is Gaby’s witness to the events of the 1930s which involve even her beloved elder sister, Ulla.
Gaby is a great reader and each chapter is prefaced with extracts from some of her favourite books. The Call of the Wild by Jack London is one, and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer another. There are also quotations from Erich Kastner, Ernest Hemingway, Heinrich Heine, and Schiller. Together with her friend Rosa, Gaby moves to the gymnasium (secondary) school and encounters Frau Hofstadt, a charismatic teacher of literature. The two girls slavish fans of this elegant woman, only becoming disillusioned when she asks them to join the girls’ division of the Hitler Youth Movement. Gaby then discovers that Frau Hofstadt is in fact Goebbel’s mistress. Around the same time Ulla becomes pregnant by Karl her boyfriend whom Gaby mistrusts but cannot pinpoint why. Slowly the hold that Hitler has on the German population becomes evident, with Jewish friends disappearing and some like Albert Einstein leaving for America, until in the end Gaby’s parents decide to leave Germany too. Even though they are not Jewish, but they have been marked as ‘white Jews’ and are therefore vulnerable.
The story starts slowly and there are some annoying Americanisms in the text which detract from its historical feel, but after this slow start it does build inexorably to the climax of the book burning. The extracts from the works of literature which preface every chapter do not entirely fulfil their purpose in that they are too long in some cases and spoil the flow of the narrative. This is, however, a story which will shine a light on a dark period of history and it should provoke some heated discussions about censorship.