Kirsten Boie's novel about post-war friendship

Just finished the middle grade novel, Heul doch nicht, du lebst ja noch, by Kirsten Boie published by Friedrich Oetinger Verlag from Hamburg in 2022. Fast paced, engaging characters with unique points of view. 

First off, I opened this novel because of location. It’s set in Hamburg, the biggest city in the most northern state of Germany, Schleswig Holstein.  I'd grown up listening to Hans Albers’ music about the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s notorious red light distract. It’s the area that my father came from and I visited back in the seventies, wanting to know more about his background which I considered risqué and possibly immoral (compared to my evangelical upbringing). 

As a child, I was fascinated with my dad’s low German dialect … different than the Mennonite dialect spoken here in southern Manitoba … and yet similar. I knew that the windy, flat plains of northern Germany are close to Friesland where Mennonites originated.  

A second reason I wanted to read this book is because of the time. It’s not just set in Hamburg, it’s set in the ruins of Hamburg … in June, 1945 … after the war. Massive bombing by the Brits (or Tommies in book), reduce Hamburg to rubble. (Eerily similar to too many places in our world today.)  How does healing begin?

I also appreciated the 3 different points of view … kids between 10 and 14.  First there’s the Jewish boy Jacob, ‘a mischling’  who had called himself Friedrich to keep his identity hidden. His mother was a blonde Jew, like him, and his father an ‘aryan’.  Jacob viewpoint confuses the reader because he’s unaware that the war’s over … that it’s safe for him come out of hiding. Then there’s Hermann, with an angry father who lost both legs while fighting. Hermann has to help his father use the bathroom several times a day robbing Hermann of any hope for his own future. Then there’s Traute, whose family hosts a refugee family from East Prussia ... not unlike my mother's East Prussian refugee family.

All three kids want friends and somehow connect in the bombed ruins of post-war Hamburg. The author, Kirsten Boie, does an amazing job of showing the German point of view after the war. Even with my rusty German, I was able to gobble this book up. Highly readable and, unfortunately, still so relevant to our current violent world.

Loved this quote at the start of the novel ...
the past is not dead ... it hasn't even passed.

Orange

This past Monday was Truth and Reconciliation Day. This is the first year it's been recognized as an official holiday in Manitoba.  It’s more popularly known as ‘orange shirt day’ in memory of a little Indigenous girl who was so proud of her orange shirt for the start of school and yet forced to give it up when she went to a church-administered residential school. The last such school closed in 1996. Reconciliation can't be limited to one day ... it's a process.

Germany has worked on this process through Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  The long words of the German language may look intimidating… but this compound word means ‘making sense of the past.’  Germany accepts responsibility for the crimes of its Nazi past and promotes healing through awareness and education. The past can't be changed but future atrocities might be prevented.  Is it enough? Of course not. But what are the alternatives? That's why we need to keep telling our stories, writing our books, sharing our secrets.

Secrets of a lurid past continue to haunt former Soviet zones who have not reconciled with their histories. In Russia, gulag museums once highlighting Soviet atrocities are now closed and history textbooks for their youth are being re-written to better fit Putin's agenda.

In Canada, orange helps us remember. Orange for the children. Orange for reconciliation. Orange for the future.  Every Child Matters!