Resumo de My Wounded Heart

This is a beautifully written tale composed mostly in letter form of a Jewish mother's struggles to keep her family together in Hitler's Germany. Lilli Jahn met and married a German doctor after herself becoming a doctor just prior to Hitler gaining power.
Under pressure from the Nazis, her husband Ernst is forced to divorce Lilli, a devastating blow for her and her five children, as she is also restricted from practising medicine and the town in which they reside begin to ostracise her.
Forced to move from the family home, Lilli, perhaps in an act of defiance, erected a name plate on the exterior of her new home that clearly went against all new Nazi edicts. Being a Jewess she was stripped of her DR. title but also failed to add the name Sara to her forename. Her damning nameplate read DR. med. Lilli Jahn. After being reported to the Gestapo, she was questioned and eventually arrested. Lilli's only saving grace before this time was the fact that she was the only person capable of caring for her German husband's children and the undeniable fact that they were now legally divorced could not better her situation.
In 1942 she was sent to Breitanau labour camp where she was to reside for the two years prior to her death. In this time and before it Lilli, her children and friends kept regular correspondence. Miraculously most of her letters survived, some being smuggled out of the camp when she learnt of her fate.
In these often heartbreaking letters Lilli continues from afar to give to her children and friends the love,comfort and courage that she herself was in dire need of. Lilli encouraged her children to write to her and told them often of how she missed them and wanted with all of her heart to see them again. Her youngest child being only two years old at the time of her arrest, it is entirely clear the pain she feels for her abandoned children. Her four daughters and one son are left to basically fend for themselves, their father being too busy with his own job and new 'pure' family.
Amazingly Lilli encourages her son in his work as an airforce auxilary for the Nazi army, even though he is eventually ousted because of his tainted bloodlines. She was never a practising Jew yet believed her children had the right to choose. Kept imprisoned waiting for a non-existent trial Lilli was kept alive by the packages of food and messages of hope sent to her by family and friends. Those few that did not abandon her remained close but did not know the full extent of the harsh and ugly conditions she was forced to endure. This was of course because of the extreme censuring of all mail in and out of Breitanau.
When Hitler's army was beginning to fall under the powerful forces of the Allies, the last purging of the Jews was begun. Lilli Jahn was sent to Auschwitz and she died there of unknown causes (unknown at the time) in 1944. The Mayor of the town where she resided was arrested upon American occupation in 1945 because of the constant undermining of her character and eventual deportation brought about by his correspondence to Nazi bureaucrats.
An intensely moving book about the true heroes of WW2, My Wounded Heart depicts the deterioration of Germany under the National Socialists party and is an epic tale of the reality of Hitler's Holocaust.
Lilli Jahn was just one of many, an ordinary woman trying to live in extraordinarily terrible times.

Resumos Relacionados