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1933 – 1999: Hold on to hope
1933 – 1999: Hold on to hope
When Karen Cartwright is unexpectedly called home to nurse her ailing father, she goes with a heavy heart. The house she grew up in feels haunted by the memory of her father’s closely guarded secrets about her beautiful mother Elizabeth’s tragic death years before.
As she packs up the house, Karen discovers an old photograph and a stranger’s tattered love letter to her mother postmarked from Germany after the war.
During her life, Karen struggled to understand her shy, fearful mother, but now she is realising there was so much more to Elizabeth than she knew. For one thing, her name wasn’t even Elizabeth, and her harrowing story begins long before Karen was born.
It’s 1941 in Nazi-occupied Berlin, and a young Jewish woman called Liese is being forced to wear a yellow star…
Berlin
Going to Berlin at the time of the Nazi atrocities is never going to be easy but this book does it very well and very poignantly. You are able to understand the horrors of daily life there and then, the story heads to the concentration camp and highlights the horrors there.
The city of Berlin is nicely evoked across the years and it’s always fascinating to see the city as the wall came down.
Destination: Berlin Author/guide: Catherine Hokin Departure Time: 1933 – 1999
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