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.