This is an exceptional book. It deals with the difficult topic of the holocaust, not holding back on the horrors. Not in any graphic way, but rightly upsetting. It should disturb us.
The story is fictional, starting when the Nazis invade Salonika, Greece, and a German officer offers an eleven-year-old boy, known to be always truthful, a chance to save his family. His role is to tell his fellow Jewish residents to board trains to a place where he is told safety and protection prevail. But when he sees his family being herded into a boxcar on the final train, he realises he has in fact helped send them to their demise at Auschwitz. Truth becomes a stranger to him from that moment on, as his story intertwines with the stories of his family, friends and that Nazi officer.
Using the mechanism to have the book narrated by “Truth” personified, allows the reader to ponder their own relationship with Truth. Some may treat it with the respect it deserves, some may be fast and loose with it, but very few will be able to say they are absolutely truthful. That they never lie. And that is what this story challenges.
The setting is the most extreme of circumstances, the Nazi occupation of Salonika and expulsion of a large Jewish community. I expect it is well researched and accurately presented. It is very clever writing, thorough, thought provoking, revelatory and challenging.
Christian values may well be central themes, presented to all readers regardless of faith, in an appropriately challenging way. Truth, atonement, love and forgiveness.
Horror is not a strong enough word to sum up what happened to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. This story describes some of the unbelievable cruelty, which if you didn’t know it was true you would think it too horrendously unbelievable to be truth. But the stories are true and it must never be forgotten that people inflicted such pain on fellow people. Books like this play an important role in keeping this alive.
The individual stories in the book have twists and turns that neatly overlap. The characters are fascinating, flawed, believable and the psychological effects of their experiences and trauma are realistically portrayed.
As their lives pan out in the post war years, none can escape the haunting horrors that they carry, but they do realise that unforgiveness eats away like a cancer, and has to be dealt with to find any sort of peace.
Circumstances bring their paths to cross. Forgiveness does not negate the need for justice. But truth, reconciliation and forgiveness are the way to find a lasting peace.
