Dear Readers,
The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron
is one of the WWII books that I put aside because I had read too many books
about concentration camps all at once. I needed to read about something,
anything else. Well, I couldn’t wait any longer and I am so glad I didn’t
as this is a fantastic book.
Adele is Austria’s sweetheart. She is the youngest member of the Austrian Philharmonic when the 3rd
Reich has taken over. She lives a very sheltered life and has no idea
what true horrors the Reich is bringing to the rest of the world. She has
heard rumors, but not many because her parents have protected her from all
those horrible things. Her father is a general in the military and
supports the Nazis and her mother seem to live in a world that doesn’t really
exist.
Adele’s happy world is shattered the night she finds out
what is really going on with the Nazis and the Jews. She then agrees to
help try to get a family of Jews out of town. She is caught helping them
and sent to Aushwitz where she becomes part of the woman’s orchestra. Her
world is upside down and she is forced into a new reality, one that is, to say
the least, difficult to understand and handle.
Kristy uses her books to show us some of the stories of
Auschwitz. They may not be ones we have heard before, but that doesn’t
mean they are any less important that the more familiar ones. At one time
Adele struggles with having to get up in the morning to go play happy, cheerful
music for the prisoners headed off to a brutal day of work. She wonders how she
can continue doing that when she knows that many of them won’t return from the
work detail just because they are starving to death.
It makes you wonder about the beauty that was produced in
that concentration camp. Part of this book is a contemporary story about the
search for the woman behind a painting that Sera has been familiar with since
she was a young girl. Who would paint a picture of a prisoner, and
why? Interesting. There are so many stories of what happened to
certain people behind those fences that we may never know, but Kristy gives us
a little glimpse of one of these stories.
I could go on and on as there is more than one thread
running through this book. It makes you think about the families and what
happened to them once they were feet on the ground in Auschwitz. Not
knowing what happened to each other and how even those that were in the same
prison camp had no idea if their family members were alive or dead. How
to the Nazis it was so important to dehumanize the prisoners so they could break
their will and make them easier to control.
Not a happy, easy book to read, but one that is so worth
it.
Happy Reading,
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