100 Books Like City of Women

I was immediately hooked by this brilliant novel because of its unusual omniscient narrator, the Grim Reaper. Death, stressed out by the surfeit of “clients” he must deal with during World War II, reveals himself to be a sensitive narrator who sees everything. He especially keeps his eye on a young German girl, her loving foster parents, and the Jewish man they hide and protect.

I fell in love with these characters as they struggled with moral decisions, wartime hardship, danger, and tragedy. Despite the realistic portrayal of German life during WWII, I found this book to be an uplifting read. 

Memoirs from WWII abound, but this one is a stand-out. In 2015, I attended a talk by Marthe Cohn, a Holocaust survivor and French spy. A diminutive woman in her mid-90s, Marthe perched on a high chair, her husband by her side, and recounted her experiences of living in German-occupied France and serving as a spy for the French Army. 

I was totally captivated by her personality, and later, I was thrilled to find her memoir as engaging as she had been in person. The story of her war years is both exciting and authentic. A pleasure to read due to the masterful writing of Cohn’s co-author, a renowned biographer, this should be on the reading list of anyone interested in Jewish heroes during World War II.

Eye-opening nonfiction, this book reads like a high-stakes adventure, revealing stories of real Jews who lived the day-by-day horror of hiding from the Gestapo in the capital city of the Third Reich. 

I first read this book more than thirty years ago, and over the years, I have recommended it to readers who want to know more about Jewish life in Germany during WWII. Ten years ago, I reread it and found the book as interesting and gripping as I remembered.

What a pleasure to again meet this handful of “underground” Jews who survived with the help of friends and strangers—German protectors from a variety of backgrounds, each with different motives and foibles, who did their bit to undermine the Nazi final solution.

For me, this was a bonanza. Drawn to time-travel stories, I also enjoy magical realism and alternating viewpoints. This book has all these elements. A bookshop owner and a talented Jewish violinist fall in love in Berlin in 1933. This alone would have grabbed my attention. But the bookstore owner has a secret–a time-tunnel “wormhole” that enables him to visit the future.

The pre-war German story told by Max is interwoven with the postwar story recounted by his love, Hanna, who survives the Holocaust with no memory of events after her 1936 arrest. As a writer who knows the period well, I appreciated the historical details of time and place, and I was swept away by the haunting prose, the passionate love story, and the inherent suspense. 

This moving memoir is written in 1945, right after the evacuation of Auschwitz and the start of the Death Marches.

It is considered the only book written inside the camp. Eliazer ‘Eddy’ de Wind hid himself in the camp in January 1945 to escape the Death Marches. He wrote about the daily life in the camp while it was still fresh in his memory. The memoir was published in 1946. Nobody was interested and it bombed, but it was rediscovered in 1980 and became a semi-classic.

In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to escape from Auschwitz—one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. His aim was to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the still surviving Jews of his native Czechoslovakia and Hungary and the world of the nature of Nazi policy towards the Jews. 

Sadly, his warnings were not taken sufficiently seriously. The problem was the inability of those to whom he reported to take in the full implications of the ‘final solution.’ Vrba was tormented for the rest of his life (he died in Canada in 2006) by his failure to persuade his interlocutors of what was actually taking place in Auschwitz.

If Lothar Orbach survived in Berlin by creeping about in the shadows, Freddie did the opposite. This Viennese Jew brazenly entered the lion’s den of Nazi-occupied Paris and hobnobbed with the Wehrmacht. His true story is so amazing it would seem preposterous in a novel. Freddie left Austria after Hitler’s annexation of his country, and aged 20, with a false Aryan identity, he headed for the City of Lights. There he befriended Nazi soldiers and sold them his services as a guide to the red-light district, thereby earning commission from the nightspots and brothels to which he ushered them. "In reality I was a pimp," he writes. "But I didn’t consider it a situation I should be ashamed of. Because it saved my life." His luck ran out when a spurned lover betrayed him to the Gestapo, and he ended up in Auschwitz. Thankfully this remarkably resourceful man stayed alive…but… show more.

Andie Newton writes historical fiction with strong female leads, set during World War II. In The Girls from the Beach, Kit, an American nurse, is sent behind enemy lines to infiltrate the Reich and steal something critical to the outcome of the war. It’s a gripping, edge-of-your-seat story that’s guaranteed to have you bawling by the end.  

Obviously, I’d need a time machine to have dinner with Kit as a young woman, but she could still be around today, recounting heroic tales from that awful time. Kit is super brave and she’s persevered through unimaginable circumstances. Even if she didn’t want to share her stories, I’d invite her as a thank you for the sacrifices she and all service people made so we have the freedom we have today. 

The bravery and sacrifice of women in the Second World War is repeated in several European countries as families struggle to fight back and survive simultaneously. The novel spans over two decades as the author brings to life a young woman’s fight to survive and protect everything she loves. Although trapped in a turbulent time, the importance that rural Italian midwives during unimaginable circumstances is revealed in a touching and emotional manner. Under the Light of the Italian Moon shines a light on bravery, sacrifice, and humanity.

So you will need a strong constitution to read this book. I first read it after leaving a museum visit to Auschwitz on a train heading for Slovakia. It was the most harrowing of reads, but I think, one of the most important of my life. Although we ‘think’ we know about Auschwitz and Polish history, this gives you a personal, often harrowing first-hand account of the camp. Make sure you have a box of tissues ready.