Behind the Bedroom Wall

This is a story about life in Germany in 1942. The war had already started and Germany seemed to be an unstoppable power. Wars do not affect just soldiers, though; they have an effect on all life in a country and Germany was no exception.

Korianna is a thirteen-year-old girl who is a "good" Nazi youth, a member of the Jungmadel, an organization for children who the Nazi party wanted to make sure had the "proper" ideas and beliefs of a loyal member of the Nazi party.

Korianna is being taught to hate jews, hate anyone that was "different", and to turn in information on anyone who was behaving as if they were not a "loyal" German. Her friends also members of the organization.

Korianna sees examples of how the Nazi's act towards those people they don't like, including young children making fun of and attacking Jewish children; Jews forced to wear the large stars marking them as Jews; Jews and non-Jews taken from their homes by the Gestapo, bound for "work camps".

Matters change for Korianna when she finds out that her own parents are hiding a couple of Jews in their home, a mother and her young daughter. Korianna is torn between being a good Nazi and turning in her parents, or being a disloyal German and not turning in her own parents. Matters become even more complicated when she makes friends with the young Jewish girl, putting a personal face on the beings she was supposed to just plain hate.

This is an excellent book showing just how much into controlling people the Nazi's were, and just how vicious their attitudes were. It also shows how that type of life affected people living there, some following blindly the German propaganda, some pretending to, and some trying to find ways to thwart the Nazi's even within their own country.

It's a lesson that needs to be learned, for history has a tendency to repeat itself.

A very good book, well worth reading.

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