Daughter of the Reich by Louise Fein
The price of silence, the power of propaganda, the incitement to violence of poor, ignorant and frightened people -- it's all there in this well-researched work of fiction. Hetty's experience portrays the unwillingness we feel to believe the stories of evil until we are confronted with the most devastatingly direct evidence. Her character arc also shows how in a moment of crisis, one's natural morality can engender great courage. The refusal of even one individual to comply with an evil regime can and does make a difference.
It's strong stuff, reading about the rise of Nazism in Germany through the thirties, long before the occupation of Poland that set off the war. The author's note sounds a warning, and explains why she spent years pursuing the enormous project of creating an authentic and completely believable story of four children who grow up together, only to be split apart by political forces they are initially too immature to understand.
In Germany in the thirties, says the author, all media were marshalled to create a propaganda machine that managed to silence dissent in order to control and manipulate an entire population. "Today," she says, "we potentially face a similar trajectory with the resurgence of nationalism; the fast-developing far right and far-left sentiments; and extremism in many awful forms." Along with populist leaders winning elections, Brexit, and increasingly open expressions of racist sentiment, she points to "anti-Semitism rearing its ugly head once more," while people rely for news on the "false bubbles of their social media networks."
Yet stories have power. A good book "can reach out and pull a reader int a world they knew nothing about," and emotionally engage readers in the way that facts and news cannot." Stories, says Louise Fein, can live on in readers' minds. I couldn't agree more. The story of Hetty and Walter will certainly live on in mine.