A Trump trompe? Echoes from the past?

The Order of the Day by award-winning French novelist and film maker Eric Vuillard is a well-researched and creatively presented story of the Anschluss, Hitler’s move to take over Austria and incorporate it into Germany. It is a brief cautionary tale in narrative non-fiction form. Where direct quotes are available, Vuillard uses them. Where they …

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The risks of denying history

The Granddaughter is a pretty straightforward novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink, translated by Charlotte Collins. The time is contemporary Germany, and Berlin book store owner Kaspar comes home to find wife Birgit dead in the bathtub, apparently by drowning.  They had met in the early 60’s, in a divided country. They had fallen in …

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Courage in the face of fascism: the warnings of history

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück  by Lynne Olsen is an extraordinary telling of a little-told Nazi horror story, barely hinted at by the subtitle, “How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp.”  This goes beyond any book you’ve read or movie you have seen. The S.S.-run Ravensbruck hard labor camp …

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