Day After Night

Day After Night by Anita Diamant

Description on Amazon:
"Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Hebrew Bible in The Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters—young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe—in this intensely dramatic novel. Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for “illegal” immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp who survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to hope, the four of them find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country. Diamant’s triumphant novel is an unforgettable story of tragedy and redemption that remains a singular moment in history with stunning eloquence."

 

My Thoughts:

Diamant is a gifted story teller. I appreciate novels based on Jewish history, especially surrounding the Holocaust. The four women, finding life after being in the concentration camps,  raised many emotions within me. Haunting and beautifully crafted, Day After Night is a treasure. If you enjoy historical fiction, this is a must read.

Those Who Save Us

Another novel set in Nazi Germany is “Those Who Save Us” by Jenna Blum. I enjoyed this moving story.

The narration takes two views. First, Anna, a young German woman that falls in love with and hides a Jewish man. When he is discovered and sent to Buchenwald, a pregnant Anna hides in a bakery basement. She is forced to do many things over the next few years to survive.

Fast forward to the future, where Anna’s daughter Trudy, tells her current day story. She struggles to understand her mother, not knowing what she has gone through and she has her own difficult love story.

The focus of this book is on secrets and survival. How far would you go to save your life and the life of your child?

On the positive side, I was really moved by a speech given by a Jewish survivor in the middle of the book. I relished Anna's story and how she was able to find strength to survive a difficult time in her life.  

I thought the ending could have been stronger, or that some of Trudy's story could have been truncated, as Anna's was more interesting. In fact, having the entire book about Anna's struggles may have been better.

Overall, I do reccommend this story if you enjoy touching historical fiction.