About three years ago I read The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I was very reluctant to start this book and it was on my shelves for some time before I finally worked up the courage to read it. I felt very much the same when I received this book which the author was kind enough to send me. Before reading the review, and in order to explain my reluctance to read both Evil on the Wind and The Book Thief, please click onto the link here and read my explanation for my feeling this way. Nothing has changed in that respect since I wrote that review and the long preamble stays the same.
Evil on the Wind tells the story of a Jewish family, living in Germany, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. We are all familiar with the happenings of that time and the persecution of the Jews; the stealing of their property, the arrests in the middle of the night, the stripping of all dignity and rights; the hardships and the humiliations they suffered.
Ruth Friedman and her four children are left alone following the destruction of their home and the arrest of her husband, Karl. She is homeless and seeks help from her friends and neighbours who are unwilling to harbour her in case of reprisals. She manages to make her way to her brother-in-law, Herbert, who takes them in, albeit reluctantly and, as the situation in Germany worsens, he decides to leave the country and go to Argentina leaving Ruth and her family behind. He goes and to Ruth's horror, she learns he has been arrested and she and her family are turned out of the apartment which is now claimed by his housekeeper, Frau Schulz, as her reward for betraying them all to the Gestapo.
After many tribulations, Ruth manages to get her family out of Germany and goes to stay with her sister and husband in Austria. She has merely jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, as within months of her arrival the Anschluss takes place and not only does she have to submit to the same treatment as she 
received in Germany, so do her family who had no real understanding of what happened to Ruth prior to their arrival. Now they do. Once again, she is left alone as her sister, husband and children flee the country leaving Ruth behind with her mother and children. She remains behind hoping to hear from her husband Karl to whom she has written and left a letter with neighbours in their old home.
And what of Karl? He has been released from Dachau on the premise that he returns and hands over the deeds to his property to the Commandant, but once he arrives at his old home, he receives the letter from Ruth who admits she has already had to hand over the deeds to another member of the Gestapo. So, he is now on the run with a vengeance and the middle section of the book is devoted to his escape from those who are chasing him. He meets with betrayal and bravery on his way, helped by some, betrayed by others. While one's reaction to the betrayer is contempt and anger, it is easy to feel this way when reading this book indoors nice and safe and far removed from the time and place. I do wonder sometimes how I, or others, would react if tested in this way. Would be good to think we would all be brave and honest, but would we? If one's life and family were threatened we would do all we could to protect them.
In the end, Karl makes it to England, helped by the father of a colleague who has warned him against joining his family in Austria, much though he yearns to see them.
"Consider your options and remember that if the Gestapo are looking for you anywhere, it will be trying to cross into Austria. They know that's where you will want to go......They call us Jews subhuman, but they recognise the very humanity in us that makes us love our families above all else and they use that knowledge to their advantage and our destruction. Threaten a man's son and you have the man"
Karl makes it safely to England and there manages to obtain sponsors to enable his family to join him. And this is where we come to Kindertransport wherein some 100,000 Jewish children were taken in by the United Kingdom. One of the reasons I then put down this book and wanted to avoid the ending was the knowledge that Ruth decided to send her children to England in this way. She was only allowed to send two, so her elder children, Laura and Inge were put on the train.
"Ruth was determined not to break down in front of her children. She fought the lump that rose so painfully in her throat, struggled to keep the brimming tears from flooding down her cheeks as she looked down at her two little daughters, one just eight years old, the other eleven, about to embark on a journey into the unknown. How could she let them go? How could she send these two children off on their own across Europe?"
As a mother, merely thinking of this profoundly upsets me, a lump forms in my throat and my eyes well up. My elder daughter is starting a new job later this year in Australia, and I am going to miss her dreadfully and I cry every time I think about it, but I know I will see her again soon and I know this is what she wants to do. If I feel this way when a grown up daughter, capable and clever and able to look after herself, is leaving on her travels, how must these parents have felt when they waved goodbye to their children knowing that, in all probability, they will never see them gain? It is simply heart breaking and almost impossible to contemplate. Such bravery for the mother and father to send them away to save them with the knowledge that their lives will probably not last much longer. When I read in the paper about broken families, about the social fabric breaking down here in the UK because of the denigration of family life that has taken place over the last two decades, I feel so angry at our lack of appreciation of just how vitally important it is - family is everything and these parents knew and understood this.
The two children who leave are reunited with their father in England and we are left with the possibility that Ruth and the younger two will also be able to leave, but she is looking after her sick mother so will she get out in time? The ending is left vague and so we can only hope that this particular family survives the war.
I am not going to say I 'enjoyed' this book, wrong word to use for such a topic as this, but I was quite overwhelmed by it. Nothing mawkish or sentimental about the writing, it was clean and strong, no exaggeration was needed to emphasis the horrors of this time, the plain statement of fact is enough. I had not read any of Diney Costeloe prior to this but now intend to seek her books out. This is a wonderful book, deeply moving and left me, as with the Book Thief, in tears.
Evil on the Wind is going straight on my list Books of the Year. Do read....
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