My Emotional History Lesson with The Courier

Today, I'm on the Blog Tour for The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl, which is being published in paperback by Orenda Books on 21 March 2019. (E-book already available.) If you haven't already bought The Courier, I highly recommend it (you can read my full review at the end of this post). Rather than republish my review on its own, I thought I would research some background facts. I certainly wasn't intending to turn this into an emotional history lesson - read on to discover more.  

I love it when crime novels or thrillers leave me wanting to know more. I don't mean in terms of plot but, instead, I mean in terms of my own knowledge. 

The Courier is set in Norway in 1942, 1967 and 2015. After reading the book, I realised I knew very little about the Jews living there during the Nazi invasion.

I wrote this in my original review:

"The book is steeped in history - Norway in World War 2 and the plight of its Jewish people during the Holocaust - with roots in espionage and wartime resistance. Its female protagonist, Ester, is strong and courageous, highlighting the importance of women during the war and how they risked their lives. I was fascinated by the social and political background, knowing very little about the Nazi invasion of Norway during World War 2. I found myself Googling snippets of information as I read the book - and now I've finished I want to know more!"

So I did go in search of more ... 

But where did I go and what did I find?
I actually found a lot more than I expected!

I thought I would find some facts about Norway during the Holocaust and the fate of the Jews there. Rather than rely on Wikipedia (as many people do), I found myself on the Yad Vashem website. For those who don't know, Yad Vashem is the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Israel - the best place to go to for information on the Holocaust, with its testimonials, Hall of Names memorial and digital collections, and its fascinating (and heart-wrenching) Holocaust History Museum.

Here are five facts I found 

1. Germany invaded Norway on 9th April 1940. At that time, there were about 1,700 Jews living in Norway, including around 200 Jewish refugees from Central Europe. Most of Norway's Jews lived in the capital, Oslo, and about 300 lived in the city of Trondheim. (Source 1)
2. By early 1942, Jewish identity papers had to be stamped with the word "Jew." (Source 1)
3. During the Holocaust, 763 Norwegian Jews were sent to the death camps. Of these, 739 were murdered, mainly in Auschwitz. Another 23 Norwegian Jews were killed in Norway by the Nazis. And around 900 Jews escaped to Sweden, with the help of the Norwegian Underground. (Source 2)
4. More than 5,000 non-Jewish Norwegians were also deported to concentration camps; 649 of these died there. (Source 1)
5. The Germans gave up their control over Norway in May 1945. (Source 1)

Original sources are at the end.

Norwegian victims of Auschwitz

Unable to stop there, I carried on my search. Through Yad Vashem, I found a list of Holocaust victims (men, women and children) living in Norway who were then deported to Auschwitz and died there. If you want more details, the link is here. The information in the list is still lacking in many places, and will probably never be known. But in summary, the youngest was aged one year and the oldest was aged 75. 

I was astonished to discover that this list includes Jacob/Jakob Caplan/Kaplan and Solly Caplan/Kaplan from Manchester, England. It made me wonder about their stories. Were they brothers or maybe father and son? Jacob/Jakob was born in 1903 so would have been around 40 when he died, but there's no date of birth for Solly and there's no date of death for either of them. How did they end up in Norway and then in Auschwitz? If they had remained in England, they would never had died in the camps.

I mentioned this to Steph Rothwell (Steph's Book Blog) and she searched the Lancashire birth records - there are several Jacob and Solomon Caplans born between 1900 and 1910 in the Cheetham subdistrict.

Then my husband (a genealogy whizz) showed me how to access the Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony and I now know more about the brothers Jacob & Solly Caplan. These Pages of Testimony was submitted to Yad Vashem by Jacob's son in 1978:

Information (in Hebrew) was also submitted by their aunt, Malka Klein Gotfrid.

Remembering Holocaust victims

Finally, I want to mention a bittersweet burial and memorial ceremony I went to in January 2019 - one of the most emotional services I have ever been to and history in the making. It was for six unknown Jewish Holocaust victims, whose remains had been stored at the Imperial War Museum in London for twenty years, donated by an unnamed person, believed to be a survivor. 

We know nothing about these victims - their ages, places of birth or dates of death. But it IS known (thanks to forensic techniques) that these were five adults and one child. And we also know that they were all murdered at Auschwitz simply because they were Jewish. The remains were finally given a Jewish burial and a final resting place in Bushey New (Jewish) Cemetery.

As we stood outside in bitter temperatures, with ice and snow covering the ground, we couldn't even imagine what it would have been like for starving Holocaust victims in the camps, with their flimsy clothes. 

These six victims represent the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust and who have no grave for their families to visit. Fifty Holocaust survivors attended the burial and memorial service, many of them wondering whether any of these victims were from their own families.

It's possible that one (or more) of them could have even come from Norway.

We will never know. 

The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl

The rest of my review

Publisher's description

In 1942, Jewish courier Ester is betrayed, narrowly avoiding arrest by the Gestapo. In a great haste, she escapes to Sweden, saving herself. Her family in Oslo, however, is deported to Auschwitz. In Stockholm, Ester meets the resistance hero, Gerhard Falkum, who has left his little daughter and fled both the Germans and allegations that he murdered his wife, Åse, who helped Ester get to Sweden. Their burgeoning relationship ends abruptly when Falkum dies in a fire.And yet, twenty-five years later, Falkum shows up in Oslo. He wants to reconnect with his daughter. But where has he been, and what is the real reason for his return? Ester stumbles across information that forces her to look closely at her past, and to revisit her war-time training to stay alive…

My verdict
The Courier is a literary spy thriller, perfect for John Le Carré fans, and a very welcome addition to the Nordic Noir genre.

The book features a tightly threaded plot and convincing characterisation, so it didn't take long to worm its way under my skin. I was soon caught up in the lives of Ester, Gerhard, Sverre, Åsa and Turid. There's a sense of unease throughout the book, as Ester seeks answers to how her friend Åsa died. I was holding my breath in several gripping moments as she, Sverre and Gerhard played their cat-and-mouse games. I had no idea who to trust and who to believe, right until the final scenes.

The narrative switches seamlessly between Oslo and Stockholm in 1942 and Oslo in 1967 and 2015. Each chapter is clearly marked with the year and location so the multiple timelines were very easy to follow.  The writing is excellent (translated by Don Bartlett) - sparse where it needs to be, to move the story along at a fast pace, but highly descriptive elsewhere, with acute observations that paint a vivid picture of people and places.

So much tension bubbles away under the surface. But this is far more than just a thriller and a murder mystery. It's also a heartbreaking read, as Ester learns more about what happened to her family and her childhood friend. The ending brought tears to my eyes but also a strong sense of resolution.

Highly recommended!

Sources
1. Norway. Shoah Resource Center. Yad Vashem. https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205966.pdf, accessed March 2019

2. Murder of the Jews of Western Europe. Yad Vashem. https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/fate-of-jews/western-europe.html, accessed March 2019

Follow the Blog Tour

The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford

On Wednesday evening, I will be at a local Synagogue for an evening of remembrance to commemorate Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which takes place from Wednesday evening to Thursday evening. There, I will hear poems read out by teenagers, a testimonial from a Holocaust survivor, a speech by two nuns from the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary (which was originally founded in Germany and supports Holocaust survivors) and light candles for named Holocaust victims. 

Today on Off-the-Shelf Books, I have my review of The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elizabeth Gifford. 

The Good Doctor of Warsaw
By Elizabeth Gifford
Published by Corvus (1 February 2018)

Publisher's description

'You do not leave a sick child alone to face the dark and you do not leave a child at a time like this.'

Deeply in love and about to marry, students Misha and Sophia flee a Warsaw under Nazi occupation for a chance at freedom. Forced to return to the Warsaw ghetto, they help Misha's mentor, Dr Korczak, care for the two hundred children in his orphanage. As Korczak struggles to uphold the rights of even the smallest child in the face of unimaginable conditions, he becomes a beacon of hope for the thousands who live behind the walls.

As the noose tightens around the ghetto Misha and Sophia are torn from one another, forcing them to face their worst fears alone. They can only hope to find each other again one day...

Meanwhile, refusing to leave the children unprotected, Korczak must confront a terrible darkness.

Half a million people lived in the Warsaw ghetto. Less than one percent survived to tell their story. This novel is based on the true accounts of Misha and Sophia, and on the life of one of Poland's greatest men, Dr Janusz Korczak. 

My verdict
I had already heard of Dr Janusz Korczak before I read The Good Doctor of Warsaw, having seen a brief mention of him in the book (and film) The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman. My eldest son visited Poland earlier this year and learnt more about his orphanage, visiting some key Holocaust locations in and around Warsaw. But while I knew a little about his story, The Good Doctor of Warsaw really brought him and the children he cared for to life.

This is a true story written like fiction, in easy-to-read prose and dialogue, yet I can't describe this as an 'easy read.' It's a powerful book - traumatic and heartbreaking in places, yet also uplifting and hopeful in others. A love story, not just between Misha and Sophia, but also between Dr Korczak and the children that he refused to abandon. Dr Korczak may not have been their biological father, but he treated all of them as his own, putting his own life at risk while trying to keep them safe and protecting them from the horrors of the Holocaust, right until the bitter end.

The book begins before the war, providing a calm and happy contrast to the rising tension and growing fear of the Jewish community, and then the creation of the Warsaw ghetto. The book is realistic and well-researched. The descriptions of Warsaw and the ghetto are difficult to read at times, but such an important part of the reading experience, understanding the despair and horrors felt by all of the people who lived there.

The Good Doctor of Warsaw is an important book, one that needs to be read - not just to remind us how quickly prejudice can escalate into genocide, but also as a legacy for the future. We are currently living through a period when holocaust denial and antisemitism are on the rise once more in Europe, and within the UK itself, reminding many people of 1930s Germany.

Reading this book (and similar books) will ensure that we (and future generations) will never forget the worst of humanity and how easy it is to turn a blind eye.