I just finished reading this excellent novel by Maureen Myant
The times of the second world war is one of the dark chapters of human history when men maimed fellow men ,when love was a discount and mindless inhumanities were committed on fellow humans because they differed in beliefs race philosophies and political thoughts .
when the human race denigrated to lesser than animal thoughts where cruelty sadism and violence took a front seat it was the times when decency civility and mercy were at loss and people were decimated to the likes of cattle .
The story of a young boy in Czechoslovakia born in the turbulent second world war times when the German mindless automatons led by their satanic leader the greatest evil born amongst humans a non decript artist short in stature and mind could make men mindless robots to abide to his perverted will
This ten year old boy sees his father shot dead while he hides high in a tree and his mother and two sisters bundled into different trucks to different concentration camps
how this tiny soul faces the odds gets imprisoned escapes joins the partisans and does acts that an adult would squinge at never losing his humanity and his goal of reuniting his family
on the other side it shows that there are decent German families who in spite of the danger harbors poor souls who were spirited away from their homes and hearths to murder and mayhem
the meeting of the boy to one such family who go through a personal disaster of losing their only son a German soldier who deserts his army in order to avoid the mindless violence which he is forced upon and finally dies
at the end the coming together of the family seems to be an anticlimax as the boy meets a wizened old lady whom he hardly recognizes as his mother with whom he returns with his little sister while aching for his new found German home to thread back a life .
Brilliantly written novel
how lucky we are
The times of the second world war is one of the dark chapters of human history when men maimed fellow men ,when love was a discount and mindless inhumanities were committed on fellow humans because they differed in beliefs race philosophies and political thoughts .
The story of a young boy in Czechoslovakia born in the turbulent second world war times when the German mindless automatons led by their satanic leader the greatest evil born amongst humans a non decript artist short in stature and mind could make men mindless robots to abide to his perverted will
This ten year old boy sees his father shot dead while he hides high in a tree and his mother and two sisters bundled into different trucks to different concentration camps
how this tiny soul faces the odds gets imprisoned escapes joins the partisans and does acts that an adult would squinge at never losing his humanity and his goal of reuniting his family
on the other side it shows that there are decent German families who in spite of the danger harbors poor souls who were spirited away from their homes and hearths to murder and mayhem
the meeting of the boy to one such family who go through a personal disaster of losing their only son a German soldier who deserts his army in order to avoid the mindless violence which he is forced upon and finally dies
at the end the coming together of the family seems to be an anticlimax as the boy meets a wizened old lady whom he hardly recognizes as his mother with whom he returns with his little sister while aching for his new found German home to thread back a life .
Brilliantly written novel
how lucky we are
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