NetGalley ARC | Through the Morgue Door: One Woman’s Story of Survival and Saving Children in German-Occupied Paris

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating | ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Through the Morgue Door is the story of Colette Brull-Ulmann and her role in saving over one hundred Jewish children from certain death had the Nazis had their way.

Brull-Ulmann had decided by age fourteen that she wanted to be a pediatrician. In 1941 she was twenty-one and in her second year of studying medicine. She was an intern at the Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital in Paris that allowed Jewish physicians and patients.

By 1942 Brull-Ulmann and her family were forced to register as Jews and her father was arrested and sent to Drancy. This did not stop her from undertaking the mission that would ultimately save so many children, under the guidance of the hospital's social worker, Claire Heyman.

Things had become so dire that by 1943 Brull-Ulmann had fled the hospital. She continued her resistance work however. Working with her father's network, she gathered intelligence and delivered it for De Gaulle's agency until at last France was liberated in 1945.

This memoir is suffocating at times as Brull-Ulmann recounts what it took to survive in Nazi-occupide France. We get the details of how food rations and transportation difficulties made the work of resistance fighters that much harder in a world where they were already constantly in danger. Brull-Ulmann's fear of being caught never leaves the reader, even upon finishing the book.

Brull-Ulmann's voice is clear and frank about what happened in her time at Rothchild. She does not point to herself with the insinuation of, "Look how good I am", but discusses herself as one of several within the hospital doing whatever it took to smuggle as many children out as possible. She and her co-workers helped because it was the right thing to do, there was simply no other option. The author also does not shy away from the not-so-happy endings, the children they could not save. Her sorrow over these children has stayed with her, so many decades later.

While I have read several books about various resistance fighters and activities across Europe, this was the first I learned of the activities at Rothschild. I do wish this had been a larger portion of the book, detailing at least a few of her trips out with the children in her care. I wonder if the memories were simply too overwhelming for the author to give more information. I can imagine she thought of the ones she couldn't save just as often as the ones she was able to get to safety.

While I do wish for more detail, to know more about the children who were spirited away, this is an important memoir. There can never be too many stories of helpers, to prove once again that we can and do care about one another. We can and will do the right thing, when we are in that moment.

Highly recommended.

Book Review | The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII

Rating | ⭐⭐

I HATE being tricked by a gorgeous cover and a subtitle.

The Typewriter and the Guillotine appears to have some of the things I love reading about most - an intrepid journalist who lives life on her own terms, a serial killer, and World War II.

Janet Flanner arrived in Paris in 1922, a journalist for The New Yorker, who would be covering all the best things about Paris, the beauty, the art, the culture. However, she soon sees the signs of what is to come - the rise of extremism and how the economic problems and public discontent fed into it. Flanner completely changes her role and attempts to capture the attention of her readers as to why the new German chancellor is a danger to the world.

In that same time frame, a serial killer was stalking the streets of Paris, himself a child of two Nazis.

Now, here is the issue - the synopsis claims that Flanner "soon becomes enmeshed in the criminal case of a man who embodied all of the darkness she was being forced to confront".

It also says that Flanner covered his case from start to finish and it was this great symbolism for what had passed and what was to come.

Except...not really.

The connection between the journalist and the serial killer is hardly there at all. She attended some of his trial and that was it. I feel like the title and subtitle were incredibly misleading. I expected there to be some greater connection between the two, that somehow she might have been directly impacted by his crimes or they'd crossed paths before he was captured.

There's also far less information about Eugen Weidmann than I expected. This could have something to do with the Nazis destroying evidence once they'd taken control of Paris, as Weidmann was a German and they didn't want his crimes associated with them...as they committed even more and worse crimes.

I started skimming the content strictly about Flanner after a while, only because I did not personally find her story all that compelling. The author could easily have written a biography solely of Flanner without making Weidmann seem like such an enmeshed part of her life in Paris. The story of her life before, during, and after World War II would be more than enough to engage many readers.

I did not enjoy this one, but would recommend it for those who have an interest in strong female journalists, Paris before and on the eve of WWII, and/or The New Yorker.

Book Review | Heroines of the Medieval World

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Another essential read from the author on one of the most extraordinary periods in history, showcasing  a wide variety of women who were just as extraodinary. Connolly introduces many women both famous and obscure and shares their stories. Despite the fact that it was supposedly men who ruled the world, these women prove time and again that they were not merely subservient to the men in their lives. The choices these women make not only alter their own paths, but the wider world around them, some even changing so far as to change the course of history.

Connolly has organized the women by theme and I really liked this approach. I like that this lead to some overlap sometimes, because it shows how so many were connected. Themes include Heroines in Religion, the Medieval Mistress, Scandalous Heroines, Women Who Ruled, Captove Heroines, and the Survivors. There are others as well that I will leave you discover, just as I will let you discover these heroines and who Connolly chose to include. There were many women I was unfamiliar with, or only knew of in passing where they fit into someone else's larger story. As a result there are many more women I will seek out further books about.

Connolly is incredibly knowledgeable of the women and their world. This is a well-researched text with notes and references to back up her work. Despite not being organized by woman, there is still so much depth here that we get to know the women very well. She brings the women to life and does so in an informative but still accessible way.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's a fantastic read and I hope that Connolly at some point produces a second volume because there are so many more women who also deserve their moment in the spotlight.

Highly recommended.

NetGalley ARC | The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Absolute must-read, right off the bat. I could not put this one down.

The Nine is a book about doing what is right, no matter the cost; about resilience and survival and the bonds of friendship. I would like to think we could all be this brave, but I also hope we never have to find out.

Here the author tells the story of her great aunt Helene's life during World War II and her fellow resistance fighters who would escape the clutches of the Nazis and make an incredibly painful and miraculous journey across Germany and finally return home to Paris.

Prior to their individual captures by the Gestapo, the women did not know one another. All were Resistance fighters who did what needed to be done, because they knew what was happening to the Jewish people was not right. These women did it all - hiding Jewish children, smuggling weapons, sheltering Ally agents who parachuted in behind enemy lines, and more. Anything and everything they could do to fight the Nazis, they did. As they were rounded up and interrogated, tortured, nearly killed, still they did not do anything to endanger the lives of fellow fighters.

After the Gestapo was through with them, the women were sent to various prisons in France where they began to find one another and forge friendships that would ensure their survival - even when things were at their bleakest. The women came to know one another in prison, or in transit from one to another,  then in RavensbrÜck, and finally in Leipzig (a sub-camp of Buchenwald). As the war came to an end and the Nazis were determined to hide their crimes, they marched their prisoners farther into German territory. It would be during that death march that Helene and her friends made their escape.

I could not put this book down. I was captivated from start to finish by this incredible story and the beauty of powerful friendships that came from horrifying events. To not only survive themselves, but to hold one another up at various points when one or another was ready to give up, is astounding. These young women, ranging in ages from 20-29, were determined to make it home and did so due to quick-thinking, courage bordering on insanity at times, and a bit of luck. 

Oh, and it was on foot the entire time.

The author does not shy away from accounts of the torture the women were subjected to and I admit to skimming those parts. However, I don't feel they were gratuitous - I am just a baby with a weak stomach/gag reflex. Yet even within these scenes, the author is careful, treating the subjects with the utmost respect. I think this is important. The farther we get away from The Holocaust, the easier it is for many to put away the images of the horrors that were inflicted on so many.

An aspect of the story from after the war that sparked my interest relates to the idea of the trauma that afflicted the next generation - the children of those who survived. So many survivors remained silent about what they had seen and heard. The author discusses transmission studies done in the 70s on these second-generation survivors and how intergenerational trauma came to be, and how it impacted the children of survivors.. I will definitely be seeking out more information on that topic.

Books like this are so important. There are so many women who took huge risks to do what they knew was right, and we will never know all of their names and faces. While I would love to know more details about their work, that is already all but lost to history. Women especially need to be recognized for all that they did to impact the outcome of the war.

Upon returning to their homes, the women find that France has already moved on. By the time they do make it back across the front, Paris has been liberated for nearly a year. These women become the reminder of something terrible that everyone else would rather forget.

Helene

Zaza

Nicole

Lon

Guigui

Zinka

Josee

Jacky

Mena

We will never forget you.

Highly, highly recommended.

Publisher Gift (via NetGalley) | Prisoners of War: What Monuments to World War II Tell Us about Our History and Ourselves

 

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. (In this case, the publisher contacted me by email, and directed me to NetGalley if I was interested.)

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The importance of this book cannot be overstated. it is a timely look at our relationship with statues dedicated to history. One only has to look at the arguments made against removing confederate statues from public spaces to see the relevance. (Side note: pull all that bullshit down and stick it in a museum, with context, where it belongs. There are no heroes of the confederacy and not a single one of those men should be honored for their actions. They fought to keep slaves and no amount of supposed 'good' they ever did can make up for that fact. Fuck THAT bullshit narrative.)

Anyway.

Addressing this issue of accepting statues at face-value of being accurate representations of a moment in time in our history of war is done quite well within these pages. The author not only looks at how these monuments are written about, talked about, and viewed in the US, but looks at various monuments to the very same war and how they are viewed in countries around the world. In total he discusses 25 different monuments, from the US, to Italy, to Jerusalem, China, and many in between.

The photographs are stunning and for once I was glad to have received the file for my laptop only instead of my Kindle. Even though I hate sitting at my laptop to read, the photos alone were nearly enough to make it worth it. This truly is a book to have a physical copy of to peruse at your leisure. I don't feel it is a book meant to be read quickly or in just a couple of sittings. It will definitely give anyone pause who has visited these sites, and perhaps grapple with how one originally interpreted the monument, compared to its original and intended purpose.

One of the biggest take-aways from this book is the vast difference in how World War II is memorialized. Here in the US, our statues are to honor the heroes and our triumph over true and despicable evil. Yet around the world, monuments are most often dedicated to the victims - such as Italy's Shrine to the Fallen or The A Bomb Dome in Hiroshima. I think this again confirms the fact that the US often equates winning and patriotism - though it must also be remembered that aside from Pearl Harbor, World War II was not fought here. The monuments to the victims and the fallen are most often literally on the site of the atrocities they represent.

Lowe provides much context for the various events being commemorated by each statue. The research is thorough and he writes in an engaging way. He certainly gives the reader a lot to think about - both regarding those he is writing about, and the specific issue in the US regarding confederate monuments still standing.

When we come upon these monuments, either because we've specifically taken a trip to see them or we stumble upon them by accident, we must not stop asking ourselves to look beyond the scenery as it being another pretty picture for photo ops. We have to consider the original intended purpose of the statue, what aspect of history is being told, and whether or not it is actually accurate in its depiction.

Highly recommended.

Mini Reviews | Belle Epoque Murder and Mayhem

I don't typically care to read much about France unless we are talking 900 years ago and Eleanor of Aquitaine. But I recently read a great book that I'll be discussing shortly, which lead me to books specifically about certain crimes described in that book. Overall they were hit-or-miss, and I think from here on out I will stick to the era of the first Plantagenets.

 Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book is so much more than a collection of vignettes about various crimes that occurred in the City of Light during the Belle Époque. Despite being considered this 'beautiful time' of artistic and cultural advancement/comfort before the abject horror of WWI, Paris was also a violent place filled with criminals - much like every other major city in the world.

The initial focus of the narrative is one of the greatest heists ever - the stealing of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Based on this, I assumed incorrectly that much of the book would focus on her disappearance, but instead I got so much more. Early on we are introduced to Alphonse Bertillon, a Paris detective who would transform investigative techniques with his system that recorded several markers of each person arrested and catalogued that information in order to identify culprits of future crimes.

Several other crimes and notorious criminals are discussed as time goes on, with the narrative coming back around to advancements Bertillon and others made in techniques, as well as to give progress or lack-of in regards to the Mona Lisa. One group I was interested in learning more about was the Bonnot Gang and their reign of terror as they rampaged across the city, stealing and killing. The shoot-out which eventually claimed Bonnot's life was quite the intrigue and I decided to find a book that detailed the evolution of the gang, its members, and their crimes.

Despite all of the above, I don't think this book can truly be classified solely as a true crime book, as there is so much cultural history here as well. The authors did what must be a fantastic amount of research in order to really set the tone to immerse their readers in the world at the time. There is a gritty feel here as we see the dark side of the city, but there is also light.  The political climate plays a role as well, and anarchists seems to rule the day, but we also see the rich artistic and intellectual culture that flourishes.

Definitely recommend for those who enjoy history of this kind.

 Rating ⭐⭐⭐

This was one of the stories touched on in the above book, so I was delighted to find it when I was at the library to pick up another book on a similar topic.

At the heart of this story is not the brutal murder of court official Toussaint-Augustin Gouffe and the search for his killers, but the idea of hypnotism and whether or not someone can:

a) commit crimes such as murder while under hypnosis

and

b) be held accountable for said crimes if determined to be acting under hypnosis

This story was really hard to stay with sometimes. There would be sections that were really tantalizing and I couldn't put the book down. But other times it was such a snooze-fest that I skimmed sometimes pages at a time - especially when it came to the hypnosis information itself and the competing schools of thought who did believe it was possible to get someone to commit criminal acts/violations against a person's own morals when hypnotized vs. those who said it was impossible. Either way, all boring.

But, like I said, that was kind of the heart of the story because it determined whether Gabrielle Bompard would face execution or not for Gouffe's murder. Bompard  insisted she had been hypnotized by her lover, Michel Eyraud, a much-older married con-man. The couple was short on money and a scheme was devised where Bompard would lure Gouffe to a room set up in which to kill him in. Eyraud hid behind a curtain in the alcove as Gouffe and Bompard sat on the couch. What happened next was a matter of who you believe. Bompard insists Eyraud grabbed the loop from her hands and hoisted Gouffe in the air, but when the ceiling beam broke, he fell and Eyraud strangled him with his bare hands. Eyraud insisted it was Bombard who put the fashioned noose around the man's neck herself. Either way, Gouffe was dead. They stuffed his body in a trunk after discovering they did not get the money they thought they would in the robbery, then took a train to Lyon and dumped the trunk on the riverbank.

When Bompard and Eyraud were finally in custody - and no longer together - the whole sordid affair captivated society who dubbed Bompard the "Little Demon". The sexism is obvious to us now, even though it was not considered an issue at the time.

Overall I found the writing inconsistent. It's not a terrible book, but there are parts that really dragged. I'm not sure why, because there was such potential for something really good here. If you're interested in whether or not the hypnotism defense worked, give it a read. If not, you're not missing out.

 Rating ⭐⭐

So...the city of Paris may have been gripped by the terror of the crime spree that occurred over sixth months in 1911 and 1912, but this book is the opposite of gripping. Who knew anarchy was so boring?

I first learned of the Bonnot gang in the first book I reviewed in this post. I thought surely the entirety of the story would be as interesting as the pages devoted to it there. How wrong I was.

The entire first section of the book was devoted to biographies of each of the anarchists who would figure in prominently later. I skimmed a lot of that because I didn't feel it was important - I was right - and it was not written in an engaging way. I did not care about their backstories.

The narrative picks up a bit in the second and third parts when they begin their crime sprees. They spread out across the city, robbing banks and wealthy members of society and killing anyone who tried to stop them. Not too sympathetic, but it really seems like the author tries extremely hard to wring some sympathy from the reader, but no thanks. I tend to not feel bad for murders who die in gunfights with police.

Unless you are SUUUUUPER interested in a bunch of anarchists who were thieves and murderers, you can pass on this one. It was boring and I found The Crimes of Paris to be better in telling the story because it was not bogged down with dreadfully boring details that I did not care about.

NetGalley ARC | Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins

I received a free digital ARC from the publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book would definitely best be enjoyed as a giant coffee table book, where you can peruse at your own discretion, even jumping around from one topic to another if you would like. You can of course also read it straight through, it is not as though it is a drag. I just have a soft spot in my heart for books that are meant to be perfectly lovely and large and demand attention. This book is one of those. It also happens to be the guide that was to accompany the Mesopotamia exhibit on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum that was to run from mid-March through July 27th. The pieces were on loan from the Louvre, though I have not yet looked up whether the exhibition will be extended, or not due to COVID-19 storming on up in here and ruining everyone's year.

Mesopotamia was home to easily some of the greatest civilizations ever - namely Babylon and Ninevah. Though they, and many others, have long since vanished from our world, we never stop wondering about them, never stop looking for them, never stop imagining what it would have been like to live there, in that time. Archaeologists continue searching for whatever lost pieces of these mighty civilizations they can find, and as a result we end up with amazing collections. Though, truly, the collections should be returned to the places they came from. But that is a whole different conversation, meant for a different kind of book. This simply could have been a beautiful catalog of amazing objects that have survived for thousands of years. The problem is, the idea of French colonialism is never actually addressed, yet the archaeologists who discovered and stole these priceless artifacts to begin are presented as some kind of saviors and that does not sit well with me. You can not present one side of the story, but not the other. Just think of how many artifacts were lost in those years where pretty much anyone could be an archaeologist and go tramping around wherever they pleased, digging up what they wanted, taking what they found most valuable, and throwing away things they thought they didn't need. So much history has been lost by simple incompetence and arrogance. It makes me sick.

The book begins with those very first civilizations, and onto a fair amount of what it was like at the time Alexander the Great showed up. There exists here such a variety of objects that tell so many stories, and I am insanely jealous that the Louvre has such a stunning collection. Everything you could possibly imagine is showcased here - seals, jewelry, and of course the cuneiform tablets that fascinated me endlessly as a child. Though, to be fair, I can still stare at them for a good long minute as an adult.

In addition to beautiful photos, there are several essays on a wide range of topics - history, religion, economy, and yes, cuneiform writing, plus so much more. I appreciated the attention to detail given in the essays, while also being concise and realizing that the reader was likely just as much here for the photos as the essays. Again, addressing the  theft of these artifacts and objects would have been a great idea, but you will find no such thing within these pages.

The photos are absolutely stunning and as a reminder, this book is 100% meant to be a physical book - digital did it no justice. Seeing as how I will not be able to visit the Getty any time soon, and the Louvre is a ways off until Eleanor is older (fun fact: the only known object still in existence that belonged to Eleanor of Aquitaine is there so yes, we are going to France in the future to see one item and one alone: the Eleanor rock crystal vase. I know I will cry and I won't even be embarrassed.)

The book is well-designed, the layout is perfect, and it serves it purpose well. Recommended, as long as you remember that archaeologists stole massive amounts of priceless treasures that did not belong to them, and colonialism is a bad, bad thing.

Review Bomb | Vikings

Oi! Two drastically different books on the same subject today. Who knew it was possible to make Vikings utterly BORING?!

 Rating: ⭐⭐

I waited so long to finally get this, and it ended up taking me aaaaages to get through. I skimmed a lot. The author is supremely knowledgeable about the subject matter but the book is bone-dry. And that is coming from someone who reads non-fiction almost exclusively. I just could not get into this one, no matter how hard I tried - which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it, because the Vikings are not a boring subject matter at all. Yet, here we are. It did not help that the print was incredibly tiny. Normally that doesn't bother me, but if I am already borderline about picking it up once my boredom has set in, print size becomes an issue.

Ferguson can not be entirely to blame, I suppose, though it is his writing style that nearly had me asleep. A major issue with this kind of history is the lack of written records. The author even addresses this issue early on. We don't have contemporary sources because there are very few, if any, that could be called conclusive. That is why we have non fiction texts today that focus on what we can learn from other records, such as those who were conquered by these warriors. But, as we know, those sources themselves are biased against their enemy. Basically, this book is a snooze-fest and that makes me sad. Definitely NOT a starting point if you know nothing about the Vikings, their history, and/or their impact on the world.

At least the cover is pretty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Despite having a more ridiculous cover, this book covers the topic in a far more engaging way. I am really just chalking this up to be the varying of writing styles. Maybe. My opinion might change in another thirty minutes, who knows.

Either way, this book was better and I read it much more quickly because I wanted to keep reading. That doesn't mean it is prize-worthy, but it is certainly attention-worthy.

What this book does rather well, as compared with the previous one above, is that it works WITH the material available, dealing in the provable and concrete. Though the Vikings are long gone, they left a lasting legacy that survives to this very day, all around us. The reach of the Vikings spanned half the globe and it shows. All the usual gang is here, Ragnar, Ivar, and Erik. But we also meet Vlad, Olga, and a cast of others who each contributed to this legacy. It is a given that we also hear quite a bit about my boy Alfred the Great, and his efforts to hold the Vikings back and retain/build up his kingdom.

Given the lack of primary sources, I appreciated how well the author used what we do have, both from the conquered and the conquerors. The book is told in chronological order, but then breaks down further by region. We see the mighty warriors as clusters of men in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and watch them spread out far and wide, testing the waters of Ireland, England, Spain, Iceland, Greenland, and finally North America to the west. But they went east as well, and from those journeys we get the Rus, the Balkans, Ukraine, and so many places in between. These warriors also travelled to the Middle East, leaving their mark there as well.

When one considers the lasting impact of the Vikings on our world today (such as days of the week named for their Gods, and my fave football team, to name a very very few - you might be surprised if you do a search to find out just how many of our words today come from the Vikings), it is easy to forget how short their era of exploration, raiding, and pillaging actually was. Less than 300 years, to be exact - from that fateful arrival at Lindisfarne in 793, to the felling of my fave berserker, Harald Hardrada, at Stamford Bridge in 1066.

Speaking of the last Viking warrior, I appreciated the attention given to Harald Hardrada. Though I am firmly on the side of the Anglo-Saxons in all matters of 1066 (don't even get me started on William the Bastard, though I recognize he was necessary in order for the rest of history to play out as it did), there is a special place in my heart for this guy. What a life he lived, and how lucky we are to even know anything about it. Before venturing on his ill-fated voyage with King Harold's seriously crazy brother Tostig, Hardrada spent much of his life journeying in the opposite direction. He spent several years in the east and found himself as a commander of the Varangian Guard, mercenaries of the Byzantine Empire. This was an elite group and it was a privilege to become a guardsman. The men in this infantry unit enjoyed great wealth as a result. Given his history, it makes his death at Stanford all the more surprising - his men were simply not prepared for what the other Harold was bringing to the battle.

Recommended.