The Wind Knows My Name

 

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende  260 pp.

In 1938 Vienna, Austria young Samuel Adler has his life torn apart on Kristallnacht. His father is injured and disappears after the Nazi's destroy his medical office and their home. With the help of a neighbor and the pharmacist Dr. Adler did business with five year old Samuel is sent alone on a Kindertransport train alone with only a change of clothes and his precious violin. He never sees his parents again. Evenutally he makes his way to the U.S. finally making his home in California. In 2019, seven year old Anita Diaz and her mother escape from violence in El Salvador and make their way on the roof of a train to the U.S. Border. They arrive to become victims of the separation policy where refugee children were removed from their parents. Anita's mother disappears and Anita, who is blind is stuck in a system that shuffles her from one bad situation to another. Her best coping skill is her imagination. A young social worker and an up and coming lawyer are trying to find Anita's mother and make sure Anita can stay in the U.S. Although the ending isn't completely happy, there is a satisfactory resolution to all that happens. Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors and although this book is not my favorite of hers, it is well worth reading. I listened to the audiobook edition.

The Stone Crusher: The True Story of a Father and Son's Fight for Survival in Auschwitz

The Stone Crusher: The True Story of a Father and Son's Fight for Survival in Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield, 388 pages.

A devastating and haunting look at the lives of Gustav and Kurt Kleinmann and their family. The Kleinmanns were Austrian Jews; the family lived in Vienna, and Gustav had served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, but when the Anschluss came his life and the lives of every member of his family were derailed, uprooted or destroyed.
A remarkably well-written book which follows the disturbing and unique story of a father and son who were both interned in Nazi concentration camps from before the war began until the camps were liberated. Both men faced death constantly and found their own lives balanced on a razor's edge many times. Father and son depended on each other to keep going, but they both had to be remarkably adaptable, resourceful and very lucky to survive. The paths of the the other Kleinmann children and their mother are also recounted. Remarkable and deeply moving.

Stolen Beauty

Stolen Beauty by Laurie Lico Albanese, 302 pages.

The parallel stories in this novel follow Adele Bloch-Bauer and Maria Altmann, two actual Austrian women, aunt and niece, through their lives, especially exploring their strength as women, and how their lives were intertwined with the paintings of Gustav Klimt. Adele, who lived in Vienna from 1862-1925, sat for two portraits by Klimt, and was the model for his portrait of the Biblical heroine Judith. Lico Albanese portrays Bloch-Bauer as an exceedingly gifted woman who struggles to maintain her ideals, identity, and passion during a time when all three of these could be taken from a woman. Her niece, Altmann, as a Jew in post-Anschuluss Vienna struggles with a much more concrete set of threats. She must keep her wits about her as she attempts to win her husband's release from Dachau and find a way for them both to get out of Austria.