Originally published as The Dark Room in 2001, Lore is being re-published now in support of a film due out this year. The novel is divided into three chapters, each dealing with one German and his/her experience of WWII and the aftermath of the Holocaust. The overriding themes deal with German guilt and the appropriate German response to its past.
Chapter one focuses on Helmut, a Berliner in his 20s, unable to enlist in the military because of a physical disability. Helmut is embarrassed, frustrated and jealous when his peers ship off to war and he is still home with his parents. He keeps detailed journals about the trains and passenger populations passing through the nearby station, noticing the while people keep coming into the city, the population still seems to be diminishing. To keep busy, Helmut starts working as a photographer’s assistant and finds he has a talent for the art, but the ends to which he employs this talent and his enthusiasm for it are disturbing. Helmut himself is a strange character. In addition to his physical impairment, he seems to have some social and emotional problems as well. The reader may be shocked by some of the things he does, but at the same time, the description of life in a bombed out, shell-shocked Berlin might elicit some pity, too. Helmut is a troubling character.
Chapter two is about Lore (Hannelore), a 12-year-old girl who becomes responsible for her younger siblings when her Nazi parents are arrested by the allies at the end of the war. Lore doesn’t understand exactly what has happened to her parents or why, but she knows that she has to hide evidence of her family’s connections to the Reich. As she takes her siblings on foot on the long journey to her grandmother’s house, the reader sees the poverty, hunger and displacement visited upon the Germans after the war. The reader cannot help but feel pity for Lore and her siblings. Their hunger and exhaustion are tragic and more than children should have to bear, but for Lore, there is also the gradual realization that the world she thought she knew is very different from reality.
Chapter three is Micha’s story in Germany in 1997-1998. Micha is 30, living with his German-Turkish girlfriend and working as a teacher. As a result of a lesson related to the Holocaust, he begins to investigate his own family’s history during the war. Micha knew that his grandfather (Opa) had served in the Waffen-SS, but he, like the rest of the family, never bothered to ask questions about where he served, what he did, or what happened to him while a POW in Russia. As Micha investigates, he upsets his entire family and his girlfriend, who see no point in pursuing the question. Their feeling is that Opa was a good man who loved them, and learning the truth would make no difference; Opa is dead, so the truth cannot be known. But Micha’s research becomes an obsession and he is compelled to carry on. As he gets closer to the answers, however, he seems to hold back from learning the truth and struggles with his own motivations in pursuing it.
While the focus of the novel is on Germans’ experiences, Jews and the Holocaust are the unspoken backdrop. They are not characters, but the fact of their existence colors the reading of each chapter. You feel bad for feeling any sort of pity for the Germans, but you also question whether you would be any different than they were. And I think that is what the author wants. Be uncomfortable. Recognize the humanity of the enemy and deal with your feelings of revulsion and pity. It is a provocative novel and I couldn’t put it down.
Cannonball Read V 