Divided Lives: The Untold Stories of Jewish-Christian Women in Nazi Germany

Rating:
Summary: Riviting Stories
Review: "Divides Lives" tells the stories of woman living a in a real life "twilight zone" during the Third Reich. Dr. Crane brings her characters to life and the reader is swept into their confusing and frightening world. I am not particularly enamored by Holocaust literature. I have had my fill of books, articles and movies which portray the horrors of the camps. However, this book is different. These stories would stand by themselves regardless of the setting. The implications for our modern world, alluded to in the author's musings, are staggering. Anyone who enjoys short stories or biographies will absolutely love this book. I can hardly wait for Dr. Crane's next work.

Rating:
Summary: Riviting Stories
Review: "Divides Lives" tells the stories of woman living a in a real life "twilight zone" during the Third Reich. Dr. Crane brings her characters to life and the reader is swept into their confusing and frightening world. I am not particularly enamored by Holocaust literature. I have had my fill of books, articles and movies which portray the horrors of the camps. However, this book is different. These stories would stand by themselves regardless of the setting. The implications for our modern world, alluded to in the author's musings, are staggering. Anyone who enjoys short stories or biographies will absolutely love this book. I can hardly wait for Dr. Crane's next work.

Rating:
Summary: These stories drew me in.
Review: After reading this book I realized it wasn't just another Holocaust or nazi book. I had heard of the mischling before but only as a footnote in larger works. This is the first book I've read that really allows some of these little-understood victims to tell their story. The women's own words bring an immediacy and relevance that we can identify with even in today's world. The notion of a divided life is very real and at times frightening. Each woman's story touched me as did the author's autobiographical notes at the beginning.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating Reading
Review: Cynthia Crane is to be congratulated for writing a wonderful book about love, courage, faith and family in Nazi Germany. "Divided Lives" does an excellent job of educating the reader that not all victims of the Holocaust were in concentration camps. The Mischlinge (half-breed children), were caught in a political and sociological limbo that was, for many, quite terrifying. The true stories, told in first-person, are captivating. I felt that I was in these women's homes, eavesdropping on their conversations with the author. I highly recommend "Divided Lives" to anyone who is interested in learning more about the history of Nazi Germany, and how ten courageous women managed to endure the nightmare that was the Third Reich.

Rating:
Summary: One Heart at a Time
Review: I was sincerely moved by the personal, touching images of such a horrible time in history. So many of us who grew up after the War know this time only from a panoramic, impersonal view: newsreels, Hitler, Nazis, trains, faces, bodies, battles, movies, history books, all of it frightening and sad; stark images we can never forget or want to forget. But to hear these women tell the intimate stories of their lives, of their struggles, of their dealings with terror and the deaths of their loved ones, brings history into the heart. It's the first time I ever felt that I could, in whatever meager way, understand and perhaps sympathize with how these innocent people, one person at a time, one day at a time, one heart at a time, tried to survive this horrendous nightmare. More of us in this world today should know these stories. We should truly understand how living people were affected, not just how the images of their suffering were presented to us. We should want to give some love back in time, somehow, to help them live their time. We should want to share their heartbreak and their pain. As I read this book I wanted to do these things.

Rating:
Summary: Brings Jewish persecution to life.
Review: Many of the mischling women interviewed in this book state that the young people of today, especially Americans don't have any feeling whatsoever for what happened in WWII. Sadly, they are correct in that we learn about the war, but we don't learn about real life during the war. Facts and technical outlines of battles can only give one the surface of the struggle. To dig deeper, you need to read first person accounts such as the ones given in this book...stories of persecution and oppression that will make the war seem all too real. The paper thin line of distinction between Germans and Jews comes to life here with the children of Jewish/Christian parents who are ranked according to the amount of Jewish blood they carry...first degree half-Jew or second degree quarter-Jew. Most are saved from the concentration camps by their affiliation with their Aryan (German) family, but all suffer some amount of anti-semitism and persecution under the Third Reich. This is a revealing portrait of the fate of the mischlinge, a people who are often forgotten in the gruesome and humiliating saga of the holocaust.

Rating:
Summary: Brings Jewish persecution to life.
Review: Many of the mischling women interviewed in this book state that the young people of today, especially Americans don't have any feeling whatsoever for what happened in WWII. Sadly, they are correct in that we learn about the war, but we don't learn about real life during the war. Facts and technical outlines of battles can only give one the surface of the struggle. To dig deeper, you need to read first person accounts such as the ones given in this book...stories of persecution and oppression that will make the war seem all too real. The paper thin line of distinction between Germans and Jews comes to life here with the children of Jewish/Christian parents who are ranked according to the amount of Jewish blood they carry...first degree half-Jew or second degree quarter-Jew. Most are saved from the concentration camps by their affiliation with their Aryan (German) family, but all suffer some amount of anti-semitism and persecution under the Third Reich. This is a revealing portrait of the fate of the mischlinge, a people who are often forgotten in the gruesome and humiliating saga of the holocaust.