100 Books Like In Another Time

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.

Sigrid, the protagonist, satisfied my strong craving for complex characters. I loved this suspenseful novel for its interesting characters and the great writing style that reflected the heroine’s personality. The romance didn’t hurt either.

Sigrid seems a typical German housewife, struggling to make ends meet during the war while her husband is on the Eastern Front. Living with her distasteful mother-in-law, her one luxury is going to the movies. On the balcony of the cinema, her life changes, and Sigrid finds passion, romance, bravery, and purpose in her life. I couldn’t put this book down and was sorry to leave Sigrid when it ended. 

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.

The Unwanted is perhaps the best all-around book explaining the crisis faced by Jewish refugees trying to escape to the United States. Dobbs merges the intimate histories of members of the Jewish community in the small German town of Kippenheim, the work of the US State Department officials in Germany and France, American refugee aid workers, and President Roosevelt. By utilizing both personal and official sources, Dobbs allows all the people he writes about to speak for themselves. It’s beautifully written and heartbreaking, and whatever you think about this history when you start the book, those thoughts will be more nuanced and complicated when you’re finished.

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. 

An indelible scene: Several Auschwitz prisoners clear rubble from a dark, bombed-out basement. It’s a blisteringly hot August 1944. There is no drinkable water, none. While “hunger exhausts, thirst enrages.” Primo Levi spots a section of broken pipe against a far wall with a spigot near the floor. It holds perhaps a quart of water. He can easily drink it all himself. Or should he share with his best mate? Or with the entire work crew? (Read the book to find out.)

No one writes of the dilemmas of survival more cogently than Primo Levi. A chemist by training, Levi melds a scientist’s precision with spare, insightful writing to show how the prisoner pecking order in Auschwitz meant the difference between death and survival, between the drowned and the saved.