Hitler's canary
Hitler's Canary is a novel by Sandi Toksvig about the time of the German occupation in Denmark from 1940 to 1945. It was first published in English in 2005 under the title Hitler's Canary ; a translation into Danish followed in 2006. It is titled Hitler's Kanarie . The translation into German was done by Tanja Ohlsen. Hitler's Canary was published in 2008 by Boje Verlag and later as a licensed edition by Fischer's Treasure Island .
content
The first-person narrator Bamse is the youngest of three children of the artist couple Marie and Peter Skovlund. He was ten years old when the German Wehrmacht invaded Denmark in April 1940; his siblings Orlando and Masha are teenagers. Marie Skovlund, a famous actress who speaks only in quotes and lives in costume, regards all life as a play. At first she does not care at all about the occupation of her home country. The stage painter and cartoonist Peter Skovlund also behaves passively at first because he considers the Germans to be overwhelming. It was only when the anti-Semitic actions of the Nazis in Denmark became apparent and numerous family friends were affected that he joined the resistance for which his two sons had long been active. They no longer want to sit idly in the cage as “Hitler's canary”.
In September 1943 the synagogue in Copenhagen was stormed. The occupying power thereby comes into possession of the membership list of the Jewish community in the Danish capital. Bamse is sent to the priest of the Trinity Church , with whose help cult objects can be saved from the synagogue and hidden in the crypt of the church. A little later, on the Wednesday before Rosh Hashanah , the rabbi informed his community that the Germans are planning a large-scale raid . They want to take advantage of the Jewish holiday in order to be able to attack and deport the approximately 8,000 Jewish residents of Denmark in their homes. Bamse is again used as a courier, this time together with his sister Masha. He should warn the endangered people and encourage them to flee. Almost all Jewish residents of Denmark can be informed and go into hiding. Numerous people also seek refuge in the Skovlund family's apartment. When the old housekeeper of the family informed the Gestapo and four Danes from the Schalburg Corps and a German SS officer appeared in the apartment, Bamse's parents managed to keep the presence of the Jews a secret: the stage painter designed and created a backdrop for a living room wall the wanted hidden behind it and his wife plays, on a sick bed in the winter garden and supported by her long-time costume designer Thomas, who disguised himself as a nurse, the dying stage star. When the visitors also learn that a neighbor's cow lives in the backyard and that their manure is used as fuel for a taxi driver's vehicle, they leave the apartment in confusion. During the night, the people in hiding are taken to Bispebjerg Hospital by a doctor friend of theirs, where around 200 Jews have already hid. When it turns out that the Germans have surrounded the building, the Jews escape in a funeral procession. They then split up into small groups and are taken to the coast, where they are supposed to get into boats at night that are supposed to bring them to Sweden. This action is facilitated by an order from the German corvette captain Richard Canman, who orders all his ships to carry out repair work in the docks, so that the Danish boats have a chance to sail unmolested towards Sweden. Bamse, who accompanied the group in which his best friend Anton is, has to witness from a hiding place how Anton's little sister Gilda and Thomas are picked up by the Germans and transported away. At least he meets his brother Orlando again on the beach, who was arrested before but fled, and can accompany Anton to the boat that is supposed to bring him to safety. At this point the action breaks off; An epilogue follows, however, from which it emerges that the refugees survive and that Gilda, but not the homosexual Thomas, is returning from Theresienstadt .
In total, apparently real figures are being summed up, around 300 fishing boats were involved in the rescue operation. They brought about 7220 Jews and 680 non-Jewish people to safety in Sweden. Of the 447 Danish Jews who were sent to concentration camps , about 120 died. About the same number died or committed suicide on the way to Sweden. The innkeeper Henry Thomsen from Snekkersten is mentioned by name and helped organize the escape. He died on December 4, 1944 in Neuengamme concentration camp . Around 3,000 members of the Danish resistance movement died.
Sandi Toksvig's novel has autobiographical features; their grandparents are the archetypes for Marie and Peter Skovlund. Toksvig learned from her father how the family worked in the resistance. Her book ends with the following sentences: “I once asked my father why the family took this risk. He looked at me and said, "Because it was the right thing to do." This is a lesson we should all keep in mind. "
reception
Margit Kreß also transformed the novel into a radio play for children aged ten and over. Hans-Peter Hallwachs speaks to the adult Bamse, who tells his little granddaughter what happened during the Hitler era. In a review of this radio play, Adriane Haussmann expressed doubts “whether children have to be confronted with it in such detail”, but Hitler's canary is “a highly recommended radio play that tells a serious topic within an hour with a bit of humor and a lot of heart . "Kathrin Friedrich described the arrangement as" a really successful and elaborate arrangement and staging by Margit Kreß and a moving plea for moral courage - absolutely worth hearing! "
Rudolf von Nahl stated: “What begins in the book as a relaxed boy’s story changes over the course of the plot more and more into a description of events that, in contrast to the fictional plot, now become reports of real events that are close to the historical of the time Come. ”He criticized minor inaccuracies, which he mainly blamed on the temporal distance between the narration and the lifetime of the narrator and the illustrator Sandy Nightingale.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Henry and Ellen Thomsen at yadvashem.org
- ↑ Sandi Toksvig, Hitler's Canary. Fischer Schatzinsel, 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-81026-0 , p. 255.
- ↑ Adriane home on audio-kritiken.de
- ↑ Kathrin Friedrich on kulturhusberlin.de
- ^ Rudolf von Nahl: on Hitler's canary at alliteratus.com