Much as we like to think we’d be willing to risk our own safety to come to the aid of a fellow human being, history shows that many of us aren’t brave enough to go against the grain. But even if we do find the courage to stand apart and make a difference, is the act that feels right necessarily the right thing to do? The conundrum of humanitarian responses to wartime atrocities seems to be the central question of these two historical novels, both set in a European winter, the first during the Second World War and the second in Bosnia, this latter by one of the founders of the humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres.
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A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
German engineer, Otto Pohl, is not keen on his country’s ruling party, nor the war they’ve perpetrated across Europe. But he hopes to keep his hands clean (metaphorically, if not literally) by avoiding conscription and continuing to pursue his profession by overseeing the building of a new road in recently occupied Ukraine. The conditions of the labourers concern him, but that’s nothing to his horror when awoken one morning in the small town where he is lodging to witness the rounding up of the Jews.
Ephraim is one such unfortunate, made to stand in cold crowded conditions for a day night in an abandoned brickworks. As his coreligionists contemplate a three-day journey to the ghetto, Ephraim frets about his two sons, missing since daybreak, horrified that his wife, who stands beside him with their daughter, might have encouraged them to hide.
The two boys, thirteen-year-old Yankel and his little brother, Monik are temporarily cared for by Yasia, a country girl who has come into town in search of her lover who is now working with the police. But she feeds since shelters them mostly because they remind her of her brood of brothers back home, and is shaken to discover they are Jews.
With the town under curfew, the eventual fate of the people gathered in the factory comes as a shock to everyone, except the SS officers who have orchestrated it. Sickened and disgusted, most of the townsfolk are nevertheless primarily concerned with saving their own skins. Fear turns to rage, although not necessarily directed towards the authority that has made them all complicit in a crime against humanity. Otto is perhaps alone in actively avoiding doing harm, only to find his small act of bravery backfiring because of his failure to recognise the depths of depravity undertaken in his country’s name.
It’s a gripping, if heart rending story, with a snip of hope for some at the end. Thanks to Virago for my review copy.
Ephraim is one such unfortunate, made to stand in cold crowded conditions for a day night in an abandoned brickworks. As his coreligionists contemplate a three-day journey to the ghetto, Ephraim frets about his two sons, missing since daybreak, horrified that his wife, who stands beside him with their daughter, might have encouraged them to hide.
The two boys, thirteen-year-old Yankel and his little brother, Monik are temporarily cared for by Yasia, a country girl who has come into town in search of her lover who is now working with the police. But she feeds since shelters them mostly because they remind her of her brood of brothers back home, and is shaken to discover they are Jews.
With the town under curfew, the eventual fate of the people gathered in the factory comes as a shock to everyone, except the SS officers who have orchestrated it. Sickened and disgusted, most of the townsfolk are nevertheless primarily concerned with saving their own skins. Fear turns to rage, although not necessarily directed towards the authority that has made them all complicit in a crime against humanity. Otto is perhaps alone in actively avoiding doing harm, only to find his small act of bravery backfiring because of his failure to recognise the depths of depravity undertaken in his country’s name.
It’s a gripping, if heart rending story, with a snip of hope for some at the end. Thanks to Virago for my review copy.
Checkpoint by Jean-Christophe Rufin
Five people and two truckloads of humanitarian aid set off from the offices of an NGO based in Lyon to Bosnia as winter approaches. None of them has been entirely honest with their companions about their reasons for joining the operation and only one member of the group is aware of the extra cargo under the tarpaulin of one of the trucks which will put all their lives in danger.
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson, Checkpoint is an intense adventure story set within one of the bloodiest civil wars of 20th-century Europe posing searching questions about whether or when politically neutral support for the victims should give way to military action. While I enjoyed exploring that territory with one of the founders of the deeply respected aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres, I can’t agree with the publisher’s positioning of this as a literary novel (specifically “a powerful psychological literary thriller”) on the basis of either use of language or psychological depth. In particular, the character of Maud, the only woman in the group, reads like a male fantasy of a woman who doesn’t want to be a male fantasy, with a rather abrupt sexual awakening and the dated cliché of becoming beautiful on removal of her glasses. Thanks to Europa editions for my review copy.
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson, Checkpoint is an intense adventure story set within one of the bloodiest civil wars of 20th-century Europe posing searching questions about whether or when politically neutral support for the victims should give way to military action. While I enjoyed exploring that territory with one of the founders of the deeply respected aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres, I can’t agree with the publisher’s positioning of this as a literary novel (specifically “a powerful psychological literary thriller”) on the basis of either use of language or psychological depth. In particular, the character of Maud, the only woman in the group, reads like a male fantasy of a woman who doesn’t want to be a male fantasy, with a rather abrupt sexual awakening and the dated cliché of becoming beautiful on removal of her glasses. Thanks to Europa editions for my review copy.
 | Charli’s request for 99-word stories about an escape artist sends my imagination leaping from A Boy in Winter to a novel about a boy at risk from the Nazis, not because he is Jewish, but because of his Romani background, Jakob’s Colours. Here’s where it led me: |
Roll Call for the Jews
One bag only, said Mama. You’ll have to leave your paints behind. What hell were we heading to if colour had no place? Layer after layer of shirts, sweaters, coats; armour against the cold, perhaps, but not their hate. Mama pulled tubes of indigo and yellow ochre from the pockets, refilled them with mouldy apples, wheat-and-sawdust bread. Outside, truck engines rumbled. Beyond the town the forest beckoned. Could I survive without family, without friends? Could I live without art? I’d manage if I must. When our front door slammed, I ran. For my life.
| Her grandmother’s escape from the Holocaust has shaped the character of Liesel in my second novel, Underneath. See also my blog post Art’s capacity to disturb for how the novel features paint and paintings. |  |
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