A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An estranged mother and daughter reunite to confront their family's
role in World War II in this harrowing, unforgettable novel about lost
love and inherited shame.
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer refused to talk about her life in
Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when
she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to
live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old
photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer,
the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage,
Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past
and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her
mother's life.
Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life
during the war, and a poignant mother-daughter drama, Jenna Blume's
Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to
survive.
The winner of the 2005 Ribalow Prize, awarded by Hadassah Magazine and
adjudged by Elie Wiesel.