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ClareR (5632 KP) rated You Will Be Safe Here in Books

May 12, 2019  
You Will Be Safe Here
You Will Be Safe Here
Damian Barr | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry
10
9.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
History that affects the present.
At first glance, you would wonder why this book starts off in a South African concentration camp in 1901, and then goes on to follow a boy whose parents pay for him to go to the New Dawn Safari Training Camp. It does become clear: the title tells us what the British army said to the women and children as they entered Bloemfontein, and what Willem and his parents are told before he goes to New Dawn. They are all lied to.

My dad told me about the concentration camps during the Boer war as I went off to study German at university. He’d read about the history part of the course I’d be studying, and WW2 was missing. He thought it important that I should know that the National Socialists had got all of their ‘best’ ideas from the British (“everyone should shoulder their share of guilt”). I admit I didn’t know this much detail though.

The descriptions in this book are heartbreaking. Cruelty disguised as safe-keeping. New Dawn is cruelty disguised as (re)education. As I attempted to empathise with Will’s mother, I couldn’t help but judge her - how could a mother NOT protect her child? How could she be so easily influenced to give him to someone else to ‘make him a man’? She thinks that this IS protecting him though. The world is a harsh place, and those who are different are not always accepted by their peers (I have two sons, one of whom is disabled. I’ve always worried about how he will be accepted by other children - unfounded worries so far, as it turns out.).

The old adage ‘cruel to be kind’ is just that though: old, outdated. The new world order should be about tolerance and understanding, something that is totally lacking in some of the characters of this book (and out in the real world, too). ADHD is NEVER cured with cruelty. Respect is never gained through starvation and deprivation.

This book is written with such care and understanding: I could imagine the sights and sounds of both camps, smell the cigarette smoke of Willem’s grandmother. I felt so much for Sarah van der Watt and her son and Willem. People put into impossible circumstances. The way we find out about what happens to Sarah and her son is devastating: Willem and his class visit Bloemfontein concentration camp, and Fredericks story is part of their history lesson. This was so cleverly done, and although seemingly detached by the years that had passed, its only one hundred pages or so for the reader.

This is such a moving story, and it shows that history really can affect the present day. I can’t recommend reading this book enough.
  
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Dianne Robbins (1738 KP) created a post

May 26, 2019  
Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal by Renia Spiegel.

I read about this diary, the history of its author and poet, and an excerpt of the diary in Smithsonian Magazine earlier this year. I'm so excited that I get to read an advanced copy. It isn't released to the public until September 2019.

This is the first time it has been translated into English. It covers 2 years in the life of a 16-year-old Jewish girl living in Poland before and during the German occupation. In it, she records her life, falling in love, and life in a Jewish ghetto, before she was cruelly executed.

She had given the diary to her boyfriend for safekeeping. He recorded the events of her death at the hands of the Nazis. He gave the diary to a friend before he was sent away to a concentration camp and it was returned to him after the war when he was living in the United States. He eventually gave it to her mother in the early 1950s.

Renia's sister, Elizabeth, was unaware of its existence until after her mother passed away in 1969. Elizabeth put it in a safety deposit box for many years because she couldn't bear to read it. However, knowing the significance of it, she eventually had it published and includes her remarks and memories of the events in an epilogue.