Mongrel (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mischling is a novel by US writer Affinity Konar from 2016. Translated into German, it was first published in 2017, although the title of the English-language edition was retained. The novel is about a female, Jewish twin couple during the Holocaust , who came to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and met the Nazi doctor Dr. Mengele is used for human experiments. The 22 chapters are told alternately from the perspective of one of the two girls.

action

In September 1944, the 12-year-old Jewish sisters Perle and Stasia Zamorski, together with their mother and grandfather, were deported from the Litzmannstadt ghetto to the Auschwitz concentration camp in freight wagons . Since the two are twins , they are put in the so-called "zoo", which the doctor Dr. Josef Mengele is managed and in which other multiples and people of short stature are also housed to carry out human experiments. They are separated from their mother and grandfather. Because of their flax-blonde hair, they are classified as mixed race by the Nazis . They have been known to be called mixed race since their childhood. Of the other multiple births, at least one child each has significant injuries resulting from human experiments. The living conditions in the zoo, a former horse stable, are characterized by a severe lack of space.

The sisters are exposed to various experiments by Mengele. Stasia is poured boiling water into one ear, so that she is hard of hearing afterwards. Together with other children, including the one with the nickname “Patient”, Stasia and Perle pass the time in the camp with games they invented themselves and secret plans for revenge against Mengele and the supervisory staff. Sometimes they also find out about the fate of other children in the zoo. This includes a pair of twins who die in agony after Mengele sews them together at the back. One day, Perle suddenly disappears without a trace. Stasia's thoughts are then centered on what may have happened to her sister and when she will be back. Another day, while the children are playing, a situation arises in which a child is killed by the Nazis and “patient” is injured. A little later, the patient returns from health care, from then on he calls himself “Feliks” in memory of his brother.

When Stasia Mengele asks about her sister's whereabouts, he takes her on a short drive through the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945. Stasia sees her mother lying dead on a truck. At the end of the drive, Mengele Stasia instills a liquid in one eye, making her almost blind in that eye. Shortly afterwards Mengele disappears from the concentration camp as the Red Army approaches. Faced with the threat posed by the Red Army, the SS drove thousands of concentration camp prisoners, including Stasia and Feliks, out of the camp on a death march . The two succeeded in breaking away from the SS unnoticed. Freezing and starving, they make their way through the wintry landscape. An anti-Semite lures her into a trap for the purpose of murder, but is first killed by two Jews.

Meanwhile, the Auschwitz concentration camp is liberated by the Red Army. Perle and other twin children are freed from their captivity and photographed. She had to stay for days in a cramped cage in which she had locked Mengele and is injured on one foot as a result of his experiments. Miri, a Jewish doctor who was hired by Mengele to work as his assistant, helps her escape from the camp.

Separated from one another and assuming that their respective sister was probably dead, Stasia and Perle ended up as war refugees in Warsaw and Krakow, respectively . In Warsaw, Stasia and Feliks visit his former home, where they discover a heavily pregnant, exhausted gypsy . The children work as obstetricians before the mother dies. When Stasia takes the baby to an orphanage, she happens to meet her father, who was once abducted by the Nazis and is now looking for Pearl with a newspaper photo that shows Pearl alive. A little later Perle arrives alive at Stasia.

Emergence

The author Affinity Konar, who was born in 1978, was also influenced by the non-fiction books Die Zwillinge des Dr. Mengele ( Children of the Flames , 1991, by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel ) and Doctors in the Third Reich ( The Nazi Doctors , 1986, by Robert Jay Lifton ).

reception

The editor Ulrike Sárkány praised the novel on NDR Kultur as very worthwhile reading. The author succeeds in depicting the events with respect and with the knowledge that Perle and Stasia are the happier, richer people despite the lack of an opportunity to revenge on Mengele, to avenge those people who were once denied the right to exist by the National Socialists. The British newspaper The Guardian rated the novel as “heartbreaking”, “powerful” (“strong”) and “harrowing” (“shocking”). The Jewish Book Council praised the book as a masterpiece. Every word in the novel counts, every sentence orchestrates images and emotions in a way that the language itself seems to bring to life. The writer's ability to write would attract even readers who were repulsed by the ugliness of the story. The literary critic Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times , who praised the novel as moving, had a similar opinion . The author is very powerful in describing the hell of Auschwitz and at the same time capturing the ability of many prisoners to maintain hope and goodness despite terrible suffering.

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michiko Kakutani : 'Mischling,' a Holocaust Tale of Twin Sisters in Mengele's Grip , in: The New York Times, September 11, 2016, accessed on September 10, 2017
  2. ↑ Ulrike Sárkány: Survival in the forecourt to hell , in: NDR Kultur from July 27, 2017, accessed on September 10, 2017
  3. ↑ Anita Sethi: Mischling by Affinity Konar review - a Holocaust tale of twin sisters , in: The Guardian of March 5, 2017, accessed on September 10, 2017
  4. ↑ Philip K. Jason: Mischling , on the website of the Jewish Book Council , accessed September 10, 2017