The Reckoning: A Novel of the Holocaust

by Richard Ostrander

What would it have been like for a non-antisemitic German to have been forced to participate in the Holocaust? That is the central question that lies at the heart of THE RECKONING: A NOVEL OF THE HOLOCAUST. It recounts the story of SS officer Conrad Hartmann, who joins the Schutzstaffel in 1934 as a low-level bureaucrat in spite of the fact that he is not an anti-semite. Ten years later he finds himself assigned to help run a Nazi concentration camp (the fictional Grunwitz) on the Polish-German border despite his belief that Hitler's war against the Jews constitutes a crime against humanity. Once he arrives at Grunwicz, Hartmann faces the possibility that he may be forced to take part in the mass murder and searches for ways to help the camp's inmates, among them his childhood friend Sammy Perlmutter. Hartmann's innate decency is challenged by the psychopathic tendencies of his fellow officer, Jurgen von Bulow, and the two face off in a fateful clash towards the story's end. The second half of the novel marks the appearance of the hero's love interest, camp inmate Esther Rosenblum, and the two embark on a passionate affair only to face separation at the story's conclusion. Part romance, part suspense thriller, and part history, THE RECKONING is also a cultural tour of Germany's rich artistic past. While a university student in the 1980's, I was fascinated by the bloody history of the 20th century, the century of unprecedented violence by states upon the individual. As the centerpiece of this century of violence, the Holocaust has been a source of interest and study for me since my childhood in the 1970's. Although a work of historical fiction, THE RECKONING is grounded in many hours of meticulous research and conforms closely to the actual events as they unfolded in Germany from 1918 to 1945. It is not only an inspiring human story of a diverse group of individuals thrown together into a harsh setting of cruelty and despair but also an examination of antisemitism in Germany and Europe in the first half of the 20th century and the bizarre underpinnings of Nazi ideology. And, perhaps most importantly, THE RECKONING is also a plea for tolerance, a cry for love and acceptance of all those who are different from us in a world that is still wracked by ethnic strife and racial animus.

270 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 9, 2018