BOOKS
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National Socialism - and benefitted from it. We are not even as ap–
palled as we should be by their daughter Gudrun, whose "classified"
clerical job with the S.S. led to her marriage with a high Nazi of–
ficial. She lived in luxury, had four Polish servants before the col–
lapse of the Reich, and later held on to her ill-gained wealth with the
help of the young American soldiers she seduced.
Engelmann's Gudrun and Koonz's Scholtz-Klink not only
escaped the punishment they deserved but continued to keep
themselves ignorant of what happened to their victims - those who
were aided by Fraulein Bonse, Hedwig, and Herr Desch. Both
Engelmann and Koonz, of course, convey their revulsion at the
Nazis' persecutions, in general and in particular, and describe how
resisters and victims preserved their sanity by holding on to their in–
tegrity.
But Fink, in her fictional treatment, is the one who comes
closest to recreating the terror, the horror, and the inhumanity of
everday life under the Nazis. In her disturbing recollections oflife in
Poland during the Holocaust, Fink's readers inevitably identify with
the ordinary people, who, living in dread of the next "action," try to
escape and to confront their unimaginable deaths:
Hidden in the dark interiors of apartments, with our faces
pressed against windowpanes damp from rain and from our
rapid breaths, we, reprieved until the next time, looked out at
the condemned, who stood in the marketplace, in the same spot
where on fair days the cheerful town erects its stalls. Divided into
groups of four, they were waiting for the command to set out.
She depicts, for instance, a couple who tries to decide on how to save
their five-year-old daughter- as the Gestapo is walking up their
stairs:
"Mela," he whispered, so the child wouldn't hear, "let's hide her.
She's little, she'll fit into the coalbox. She's little, but she'll
understand . We'll cover her with wood chips... . "[And as they
are walking toward the railway station] "Don't be afraid," he
whispered [again], "Do what Papa tells you. Over there, near the
church, there are a lot of people, they are going to pray. They
are standing on the sidewalk . ... [and] you'll ask somebody to
take you to Marysia, the milkmaid, outside of town . She'll take
you in.
