Broken Angels by Gemma Liviero
THE STORYLINE (warning spoilers)
The narrative is set in 1942 and has three main protagonists.
The first is Elsi, imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto with her mother and sister. Her mother has turned to prostitution to feed her children and attempts to terminate a pregnancy herself. Elsi takes her mother to the hospital.
Willem is a Nazi doctor and the son of Himmler’s leading researcher, but despite this he has doubts about the regime and its plans, and helps women terminate pregnancy.
Matilda is a child of nine who is taken from her family in Romania to be brought up as a perfect Aryan German child, but she’s wilful and spirited.
The story follows these three protagonists and jumps between their stories, which, at first, are independent of each other.
Wilhelm’s character is interesting as he’s someone who just wanted to heal people, but when he’s sent by his father to Auschwitz to carry out research experiments on women he’s forced to face the horror and reality of the regime, he’s a part of and comes up against criticism when he tries to help the women they’re experimenting on, rather than simply viewing them barn animals to test.
Elsi, however, joins a resistance group and risks her own life to sabotage the regime, but things take a turn when she’s discovered and thrown in prison.
Matilda, whose parents were duped into signing her away on the promise of a good education in a top school, finds that she’s treated with spite and cruelty, regularly being tortured and punished. So, she and the other children in the centre form a plan of escape.
Wilhelm loses his wife and sinks into depression, telling his father he doesn’t want to do the research at Auschwitz. He returns to his apartment near the Lodz Ghetto and there, on visiting the Ghetto clinic, sees that Elsi, who is by now very sick, is about to be taken and killed.
Rescuing her he nurses her back to health and, after being given a new post by his father at the Lebensborn centre, where Matilda is held, he passes Elsi as his wife.
There he makes changes to the system and treats the children with care and attention, trying to return them to their parents, in secret, before adopting Matilda to live with him and Elsi.
However, he too is found out and killed, and Elsi is forced to live in secret with Matilda until after the war when she is discovered and returned to her parents.
MY THOUGHTS…
I really liked this book because it falls into my favourite genre of historical fiction and has the element of mystery, suspense and multiple protagonists.
What makes it different is the focus on multiple perspectives from both sides of the war – both Nazi and victims. This is a theme with Gemma Liviero stories, and one I’m really intrigued by.
The experimentation on Jewish women in Auschwitz was very difficult to read about but one that Liviero tackles with stark fact and chilling description.
The characters themselves are very flawed, and the child protagonist of Matilda is written well, capturing the nature and thought process of a child of that age who has been shaped by circumstances.
Wilhelm’s character is also very flawed. He’s portrayed as someone who is the victim of a difficult upbringing but is neither bad nor good but instead a victim of circumstance, family, political situations and the need to survive.
Of all the character’s I’d say Elsi is the weakest written. She’s not as well rounded a character as the others and at times appears to be very much just as if things are happening to her rather than her making choices in the narrative.
However, despite this, I enjoyed the story immensely and would highly recommend it. It focuses on the not very often explored subject of the Nazi Aryan obsession and is a chance to look at the war’s impact on women.
Despite many believing there’s nothing more to be said about the War, this is a book that explores multiple themes and deserves its place as a good, well written book.
