Book Review: Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham

My Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

In 1949, twenty-one-year-old Rashka Morgenstern emigrates to New York from Berlin following the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. Her only surviving family is her mother’s brother Friedrich Landau, her Feter Fritz, an Auschwitz survivor. Her mother was a prolific artist who perished in the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camps and her father had passed away when she was only two years old. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Rashka and her Feter Fritz find a place to live in New York and attempt to acclimatize to their new circumstances in the aftermath of their harrowing experiences during WW2.

The story begins in 1955 in New York where we meet our protagonist Rashka, now Rachel Perlman, married to Jewish-American Aaron Perlman who works as a manager in a seafood restaurant. Aaron had served in the Army but had not seen combat having been posted stateside in California. He admits that his knowledge of the plight of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe is limited to what he has seen in newsreels. He is a loving husband but is unable to fully comprehend the extent to which Rachel’s experiences during the Holocaust have cast a shadow on her present life. Rachel is unable to reconcile with her new life and is haunted by her memories of her years in Berlin – the anti-Semitic sentiments and Nazi policies that led to the loss of her home and the destruction of her mother’s art, her time scrounging for food and shelter on the streets of Berlin evading capture, their subsequent arrest and her Eema's deportation and subsequent death. Rachel is also an artist but is unable to pursue her passion on account of her personal demons. The burden that lays heaviest on her soul is the memory of what she had to do to stay alive and avoid deportation. Her memories are easily triggered and though she regularly sees a psychiatrist and is on mild medication, her anxiety and guilt find their way into every aspect of her life – from a breakdown in a posh department store where she used to work that leads to a brief stay in a psychiatric ward, her unwillingness to have children, to her discomfort around her building super who is a German immigrant. She considers herself not only an outsider but also refers to herself as an “oysvurf” a person with a “dead soul” a fact she admits to her sister-in-law Naomi’s black boyfriend who she assumes will understand her state of mind, himself being on the receiving end of racial discrimination and prejudice. When one of her mother’s paintings, thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis, resurfaces in a pawnbroker’s shop it takes her back to her most traumatic experiences during the War and Rachel’s horror and guilt threaten to suffocate her and she realizes that she must face her past to finally be able to have a future.

The narrative is set in 1950s New York, with flashbacks from Rachel’s past in WW2 Berlin that give us insight into the plight of “submarine Jews” (commonly referred to as U-boat Jews) who submerged beneath the surface of the city in a bid to escape deportation, removing the Judenstern ( the Star of David that was mandatorily sewn into their clothes)in an attempt to avoid identification and arrest and the black marketeers who exploited them for shelter, forged papers and ration slips. We also get to know more about “Der Suchdienst”, The Search Service , that granted select Jews(commonly referred to as the “Grabbers” or “Catchers”)special permissions and tasked them with patrolling the streets, parks and other establishments frequented by fellow Jews (U-Boats hiding in plain sight) and arresting them.

Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham is a compelling novel that revolves around the themes of grief, mental illness, survivors' guilt and the far-reaching effects of past trauma. This is a slow-paced novel that took me a while to get into and is not an easy read. The tone of the novel is dark and sad for the most part but also sheds a light on the inner strength and resilience of Holocaust survivors in starting over after everything they had been through. Heart-wrenching and profoundly moving, this is a memorable novel that I would recommend to readers who enjoy historical fiction set in the post-WW2 era.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing the digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.