Why a Booktrail?
1930s: Imagine being a 17 year old girl in Germany and a having a certain Hitler or ‘Uncle Dolf’ as he’s known as someone who takes a keen interest in you and your family….
Prisoner of Night and Fog
What you need to know before your trail
Gretchen is 17 in 1930s Germany – Hitler has just made huge gains in the 1930 election and his plans to eradicate Jewish people are taking shape.
Gretchen can’t believe it however as this is the man who is almost like a second father – certainly he is some sort of mentor having taught her about music and art. Her father was a Nazi martyr who died taking bullets intended for the Fuhrer and so Gretchen is both cared for Hitler and protected….for now.
Because when a journalist starts to reveal that maybe not all is as it seems regarding this father’s death and that Hitler is hiding a lot more than anyone could ever imagine, Gretchen starts to get curious and wants to find out just how and why her father died. But curiosity is dangerous in Hitler’s Germany.
Travel Guide
With an impressive historical backdrop and impressive historical fact woven together with fictional characters this is quite the novel – more than a history lesson it’s a historical awareness such is the, at first, innocence of Gretchen and her close contact with Hitler himself.
The Night and Fog of the title comes from the Night and Fog Decree of 1941 which allowed Nazis to arrest resistance agents wherever they were found and bring then to justice in Germany. So, the Nazis were able to spirit their prisoners away in Night and Fog without any checks and balances.
The story – a fictitious murder – is based on two real incidents – the Germany’s surrender as he was being treated for hysterical blindness and the “Beer Hall Putsch” Both remarkable event brought to life here in raw detail – evocative of time, place and emotion of the horror of living though such events. Gretchen is the perfect heroine to show us the horrors of what it must have been like to live through this Germany whilst being so close to Hitler himself. The Jews she wanted to help, her poor father she wants to ‘rescue’ again…
From places such as the Circus Krone where she and many others gather to hear Hitler speak, the crowds, the crush of bodies, and the chilling National Socialist salute… Billed as a YA book, this is a valuable book to learn of the horrors of the time.
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