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The Plum Trees
Consie is home for a funeral when she stumbles upon a family letter sent from Germany in 1945, which contains staggering news: Consie’s great-uncle Hermann, who was transported to Auschwitz with his wife and three daughters, might have escaped. This seems improbable to Consie. Did people escape from Auschwitz? Could her great-uncle have been among them? What happened to Hermann? Did anyone know? These questions are at the root of Consie’s excavation of her family’s history as she seeks, seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, to discover what happened to Hermann.
The Plum Trees follows Consie as she draws on oral testimonies, historical records, and more to construct a visceral account of the lives of Hermann, his wife, and their daughters from the happy days in prewar Czechoslovakia through their internment in Auschwitz and the end of World War II. The Plum Trees is a powerful, intimate reckoning with the past.
The Plum Trees follows Consie as she draws on oral testimonies, historical records, and more to construct a visceral account of the lives of Hermann, his wife, and their daughters from the happy days in prewar Czechoslovakia through their internment in Auschwitz and the end of World War II. The Plum Trees is a powerful, intimate reckoning with the past.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published March 9, 2021
100 people are currently reading
2510 people want to read
About the author
Victoria Shorr
8 books70 followersVictoria Shorr is a writer and political activist who lived in Brazil for ten years. Currently she lives in Los Angeles, where she cofounded the Archer School for Girls, and is now working to found a college-prep school for girls on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
July 22, 2021
I didn’t expect to finish this book.
From the beginning I struggled with the writing.
There was this invisible barrier that would not let me connect with the style and with the storyline.
This is a work of fiction based on conversations with real people who survived or experienced the Holocaust.
I was expecting a powerful and very emotional book.
Yes, there are some passages that are difficult to read, especially all that cruelty and atrocities committed against another human.
But I was untouched, and not because I have read several books about the Holocaust.
While reading the book I noticed that not once the word “Jewish” was mentioned, and I was expecting a note of explanation at the end, but there was none.
The word “people” was used 222 times.
An acknowledgment by the author:
FIRST, I SHOULD LIKE to acknowledge the witnesses whom I was lucky enough to hear tell their stories, at great cost to their own peace and comfort, at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, in 2009–10. They were mostly old then; many of them are no longer with us. But a few remain, and in tribute, I will say that if you ever have a chance to hear one of them speak, run, fly, ride, speed-walk to wherever place on this earth that they are still gracing. Like Magda, they have been touched by the angel. The light comes off them, and you will find yourself in awe.
From the beginning I struggled with the writing.
There was this invisible barrier that would not let me connect with the style and with the storyline.
This is a work of fiction based on conversations with real people who survived or experienced the Holocaust.
I was expecting a powerful and very emotional book.
Yes, there are some passages that are difficult to read, especially all that cruelty and atrocities committed against another human.
But I was untouched, and not because I have read several books about the Holocaust.
While reading the book I noticed that not once the word “Jewish” was mentioned, and I was expecting a note of explanation at the end, but there was none.
The word “people” was used 222 times.
An acknowledgment by the author:
FIRST, I SHOULD LIKE to acknowledge the witnesses whom I was lucky enough to hear tell their stories, at great cost to their own peace and comfort, at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, in 2009–10. They were mostly old then; many of them are no longer with us. But a few remain, and in tribute, I will say that if you ever have a chance to hear one of them speak, run, fly, ride, speed-walk to wherever place on this earth that they are still gracing. Like Magda, they have been touched by the angel. The light comes off them, and you will find yourself in awe.
April 1, 2021
good reading - very readable if you skip the verbiage that doesn't really say anything, (every book seems to have this) and consistent with most of what I have read about the holocaust; however, one egregious omission stands out too much to be ignored, and I find extremely offensive and disturbingly racist, and that is the author's deliberate refusal to identify the main victims as Jews, but refers to them as "(in NY) bearded white men in shaggy black suits who looked like they'd gotten dressed las January in one of those villages in Poland that had wiped the slate clean of men like them seventy years ago" (p243; [men like them????? - they are JEWS! NOT "men like them"; "the people Hitler wanted to wipe off the earth" (p249), and countless places identified only as "the people who wore the yellow star", as if the yellow star were their offense . - NEVER ONCE IN THE ENTIRE BOOK does she recognize any of the victims as Jews, when they were the main ones - WHY NOT ???????????????????????????????????????
It doesn't make sense that she should refuse to identify them and the other groups that Hitler sent to the death camps, when any account at all of the holocaust would normally include identified these groups, the major one of which is JEWS, and the minor ones which are Gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, political dissidents, Jehovah's Witnesses, morals offenders such as prostitutes, each with a different color triangle on their clothes to identify which group they are in. Her account of Kristallnacht is grossly misleading to the first-time holocaust reader, presented it as if the whole country had gone mad destroying everything in its path, when in reality, the only targets were the Jewish businesses and synagogues that were looted, burned, and vandalized. Besides being racist, This type of reporting is downright dishonest, and I caution the reader to bear this in mind and read other books about the holocaust, and not just this one.
It doesn't make sense that she should refuse to identify them and the other groups that Hitler sent to the death camps, when any account at all of the holocaust would normally include identified these groups, the major one of which is JEWS, and the minor ones which are Gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, political dissidents, Jehovah's Witnesses, morals offenders such as prostitutes, each with a different color triangle on their clothes to identify which group they are in. Her account of Kristallnacht is grossly misleading to the first-time holocaust reader, presented it as if the whole country had gone mad destroying everything in its path, when in reality, the only targets were the Jewish businesses and synagogues that were looted, burned, and vandalized. Besides being racist, This type of reporting is downright dishonest, and I caution the reader to bear this in mind and read other books about the holocaust, and not just this one.
June 6, 2021
“But when did people start knowing? Her grandfather had never mentioned it, once, during her own childhood.”
“It is this interweaving that makes this book fiction, although there is nothing fictional in these pages. Every detail comes from someone’s firsthand account.” From the author
“She was coming to think there was no meaning to any of this—that Auschwitz was either a “one-off,” a bizarre detour from the progressive path of life with no message beyond its particular horror, or else a true unmasking of the real face of Man. Maybe “holocaust” is the natural state, and it takes every Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, and all the Kennedys in the universe just to keep it at bay.”
I think to be a true human being, it is important to read a book about the Holocaust often enough to cry and be horrified, and be a witness since many survivors are leaving us. This novel brings together a multitude of true stories form survivors as well as a story of someone trying to trace her family history among the atrocities of the evildoers. I was actually stunned by the author’s choice to omit the name of the main people (the Jewish people) the evildoers were trying to eradicate, but in the end, it was quite powerful to do so, a way of reframing the evil done by the evildoers to their fellow humans and fellow citizens. It added to the general air I could relate to, the question of when did people know what was happening?
Many concentration camp survivors (or victors as one wanted to reframe it) did not know until they got there and saw despite the terrible stories circulating, they weren’t true enough. When did they know, when did the person on the street know, when did the soldiers know, when would I have known, when would my nephew have known?
I wonder of we can talk about the evildoers like this and not give their names any more time in the light. Evildoer #1, Evildoer #2, etc. This pure and primal evil still cannot be understand with any clarity, but needs to be read again and again, and this was one of the rawest, thorough Holocaust books I have read, one of the most powerful. The question of when people knew and where was god resonates throughout.
the philosopher Jean Améry, who’d been in Auschwitz: “I do not have [clarity] today, and I hope that I never will. Clarification would amount to disposal, settlement of the case, which can then be placed in the files of history.”
There was still the belief that if they complied with the law, no matter how harsh, how outlandish, if they complied to the letter, sewed on the ridiculous stars, turned in their bicycles, if they did everything right, then they were still somehow inside. Still entitled to the law’s protection,” he assures himself long after he should have faced the truth.
They started laughing a bit at that, laughing and then stopping. A laugh and then an abrupt stop. They couldn’t know then that that’s how it would be, for the rest of their lives.
“How come you’re still alive?” he blurted. “We heard you were all dead!” Of course he was right in the aggregate. They were all dead, statistically. But the exceptions who proved the rule now had the law on their side
Aranka sympathized with the girl, she said, had even come to respect that form of escape. But as for her, she was determined to live to “tell the tale,” and to that end, had developed certain strategies. For one, she said, she called the shit dried on their legs “Nazi stockings.”
Because it’s them, not us, the filth, you have to understand that. They wanted you to think it’s you, but it’s them you were looking at.” All of them, too, not just the ones in here. All those clean, long-haired girls in their starched, pressed dirndls, said Aranka, and the good-looking boys with their hats and horns. Every mother and father on their way to church on Sundays, and all their writers and philosophers who were, in one way or another, through commission or omission, the reason for the shit on the legs of the filthy, bald-headed girls in here today. And that’s who’s staring back out of that mirror, said Aranka, and she for one was going to live to hold the mirror back at them someday.
The next day the new girls were told to line up for tattoos. Which was good news, said Aranka, since they weren’t doing it so much, not like they used to, they didn’t need so many workers, and more to the point, didn’t want to keep such close track anymore. Which means they know they’re going to get caught someday, she said, so they’re trying to hide it, starting at the low numbers again, not that they’ll ever be able to hide any of it in the end. For one thing, the men who carried the bodies from the gas chambers to the ovens had been strewing the teeth on the ground along the way, so that afterwards, people could tally the millions.
“Also, the next day, he was sending back to Romania about eight hundred people”— What? To survive Auschwitz and then end up in the Romania heading straight for Ceausescu, and the worst police state in what would soon be the Communist bloc? Hardly seemed fair.
And looking back on that too, one could see that if, instead, they’d bought them all, every one of those survivors of the death camps, lovely old mansions in Oyster Bay, or beach houses in Malibu, with full-time maid service and regular junkets to, say, Monte Carlo, all expenses paid, it would have been cheap at the price compared to the cost of Palestine.
But when did people start knowing? Her grandfather had never mentioned it, once, during her own childhood. Never said a word about his brothers and sisters, just told her of a horse that had once carried him across a flooded river, and the geese that had nipped at his heels, even when he fed them.
People called the gas chamber “the mouth of the dragon.” Others said “wolf,” but dragon had seemed more fitting, since it implied mystery alongside the death. That’s what Magda had started telling herself—that maybe there was some mystery there. Not just horror. Not only death. Some glimpse of something just before—or after, she was praying for the girls she’d gotten a glimpse of through the bars of that cellar, girls who looked beautiful to her, girls who were alive and were about to be murdered. Grant them some mystery as they stare in the face of the dragon, she was praying, and us too—But something at the end, some flash of joy, even enlightenment, for them and for us, some overview, some tiny jot of meaning,
And the whole thing changed color for her then, in that one moment, slipped from the black of nightmare into the white glare of noon. Till then, Auschwitz had been another universe, governed by a new set of laws that had nothing to do with what used to be called human.
SHE WALKED SLOWLY toward the parking structure. She had no recollection of where she’d left her car. Maybe she’d never find it, maybe the car was gone, or covered with the dust of decades. She suddenly understood what the historian Raul Hilberg had been after. He was quoted extensively in the French film Shoah, and had seemed half-mad, poring over all those minuscule train schedules, as if to pinpoint the evil. But now it seemed to her that he was right. Death here was in the details.
Hannah Arendt is good at this, but then, watching the little man Eichmann in his glass booth for months on end, she concluded that evil was banal. But what was banal was the man, not the evil. Eichmann was like someone who’d woken up
from a dream. Banal, perhaps, as he sat there, captive, in Jerusalem, blinking, in isolation, facing the full turn of the tables, human, all too human, and completely alone.
And even the retribution turned out to be banal—since it was so useless, so disproportionate, a grain of sand in that vast sea of crime. Yes, Eichmann was hanged, but he was only hanged, and hanged only once. For it to work at all, he would have had to be hanged a million and a half times.
There hadn’t been an all-out campaign to keep her from walking the earth or breathing the air, but much of Europe had joined arms to kill this man’s parents, and yet, here he was, driving her in a comfortable old car back to the city.
Because she’d come to see them all as heroes, and had also learned that how one dies might not matter. That all deaths might carry within themselves their own escape, touched, possibly, with light, with something freeing. That what we see is only the external, nothing to do with what is happening inside. That a man screaming for air in the gas might be singing “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” That a child thrown alive to burn in a Nazi pit could be smiling in its own mother’s arms.
From acknowledgements:
FIRST, I SHOULD LIKE to acknowledge the witnesses whom I was lucky enough to hear tell their stories, at great cost to their own peace and comfort, at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, in 2009–10. They were mostly old then; many of them are no longer with us. But a few remain, and in tribute, I will say that if you ever have a chance to hear one of them speak, run, fly, ride, speed-walk to wherever place on this earth that they are still gracing.
“It is this interweaving that makes this book fiction, although there is nothing fictional in these pages. Every detail comes from someone’s firsthand account.” From the author
“She was coming to think there was no meaning to any of this—that Auschwitz was either a “one-off,” a bizarre detour from the progressive path of life with no message beyond its particular horror, or else a true unmasking of the real face of Man. Maybe “holocaust” is the natural state, and it takes every Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, and all the Kennedys in the universe just to keep it at bay.”
I think to be a true human being, it is important to read a book about the Holocaust often enough to cry and be horrified, and be a witness since many survivors are leaving us. This novel brings together a multitude of true stories form survivors as well as a story of someone trying to trace her family history among the atrocities of the evildoers. I was actually stunned by the author’s choice to omit the name of the main people (the Jewish people) the evildoers were trying to eradicate, but in the end, it was quite powerful to do so, a way of reframing the evil done by the evildoers to their fellow humans and fellow citizens. It added to the general air I could relate to, the question of when did people know what was happening?
Many concentration camp survivors (or victors as one wanted to reframe it) did not know until they got there and saw despite the terrible stories circulating, they weren’t true enough. When did they know, when did the person on the street know, when did the soldiers know, when would I have known, when would my nephew have known?
I wonder of we can talk about the evildoers like this and not give their names any more time in the light. Evildoer #1, Evildoer #2, etc. This pure and primal evil still cannot be understand with any clarity, but needs to be read again and again, and this was one of the rawest, thorough Holocaust books I have read, one of the most powerful. The question of when people knew and where was god resonates throughout.
the philosopher Jean Améry, who’d been in Auschwitz: “I do not have [clarity] today, and I hope that I never will. Clarification would amount to disposal, settlement of the case, which can then be placed in the files of history.”
There was still the belief that if they complied with the law, no matter how harsh, how outlandish, if they complied to the letter, sewed on the ridiculous stars, turned in their bicycles, if they did everything right, then they were still somehow inside. Still entitled to the law’s protection,” he assures himself long after he should have faced the truth.
They started laughing a bit at that, laughing and then stopping. A laugh and then an abrupt stop. They couldn’t know then that that’s how it would be, for the rest of their lives.
“How come you’re still alive?” he blurted. “We heard you were all dead!” Of course he was right in the aggregate. They were all dead, statistically. But the exceptions who proved the rule now had the law on their side
Aranka sympathized with the girl, she said, had even come to respect that form of escape. But as for her, she was determined to live to “tell the tale,” and to that end, had developed certain strategies. For one, she said, she called the shit dried on their legs “Nazi stockings.”
Because it’s them, not us, the filth, you have to understand that. They wanted you to think it’s you, but it’s them you were looking at.” All of them, too, not just the ones in here. All those clean, long-haired girls in their starched, pressed dirndls, said Aranka, and the good-looking boys with their hats and horns. Every mother and father on their way to church on Sundays, and all their writers and philosophers who were, in one way or another, through commission or omission, the reason for the shit on the legs of the filthy, bald-headed girls in here today. And that’s who’s staring back out of that mirror, said Aranka, and she for one was going to live to hold the mirror back at them someday.
The next day the new girls were told to line up for tattoos. Which was good news, said Aranka, since they weren’t doing it so much, not like they used to, they didn’t need so many workers, and more to the point, didn’t want to keep such close track anymore. Which means they know they’re going to get caught someday, she said, so they’re trying to hide it, starting at the low numbers again, not that they’ll ever be able to hide any of it in the end. For one thing, the men who carried the bodies from the gas chambers to the ovens had been strewing the teeth on the ground along the way, so that afterwards, people could tally the millions.
“Also, the next day, he was sending back to Romania about eight hundred people”— What? To survive Auschwitz and then end up in the Romania heading straight for Ceausescu, and the worst police state in what would soon be the Communist bloc? Hardly seemed fair.
And looking back on that too, one could see that if, instead, they’d bought them all, every one of those survivors of the death camps, lovely old mansions in Oyster Bay, or beach houses in Malibu, with full-time maid service and regular junkets to, say, Monte Carlo, all expenses paid, it would have been cheap at the price compared to the cost of Palestine.
But when did people start knowing? Her grandfather had never mentioned it, once, during her own childhood. Never said a word about his brothers and sisters, just told her of a horse that had once carried him across a flooded river, and the geese that had nipped at his heels, even when he fed them.
People called the gas chamber “the mouth of the dragon.” Others said “wolf,” but dragon had seemed more fitting, since it implied mystery alongside the death. That’s what Magda had started telling herself—that maybe there was some mystery there. Not just horror. Not only death. Some glimpse of something just before—or after, she was praying for the girls she’d gotten a glimpse of through the bars of that cellar, girls who looked beautiful to her, girls who were alive and were about to be murdered. Grant them some mystery as they stare in the face of the dragon, she was praying, and us too—But something at the end, some flash of joy, even enlightenment, for them and for us, some overview, some tiny jot of meaning,
And the whole thing changed color for her then, in that one moment, slipped from the black of nightmare into the white glare of noon. Till then, Auschwitz had been another universe, governed by a new set of laws that had nothing to do with what used to be called human.
SHE WALKED SLOWLY toward the parking structure. She had no recollection of where she’d left her car. Maybe she’d never find it, maybe the car was gone, or covered with the dust of decades. She suddenly understood what the historian Raul Hilberg had been after. He was quoted extensively in the French film Shoah, and had seemed half-mad, poring over all those minuscule train schedules, as if to pinpoint the evil. But now it seemed to her that he was right. Death here was in the details.
Hannah Arendt is good at this, but then, watching the little man Eichmann in his glass booth for months on end, she concluded that evil was banal. But what was banal was the man, not the evil. Eichmann was like someone who’d woken up
from a dream. Banal, perhaps, as he sat there, captive, in Jerusalem, blinking, in isolation, facing the full turn of the tables, human, all too human, and completely alone.
And even the retribution turned out to be banal—since it was so useless, so disproportionate, a grain of sand in that vast sea of crime. Yes, Eichmann was hanged, but he was only hanged, and hanged only once. For it to work at all, he would have had to be hanged a million and a half times.
There hadn’t been an all-out campaign to keep her from walking the earth or breathing the air, but much of Europe had joined arms to kill this man’s parents, and yet, here he was, driving her in a comfortable old car back to the city.
Because she’d come to see them all as heroes, and had also learned that how one dies might not matter. That all deaths might carry within themselves their own escape, touched, possibly, with light, with something freeing. That what we see is only the external, nothing to do with what is happening inside. That a man screaming for air in the gas might be singing “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” That a child thrown alive to burn in a Nazi pit could be smiling in its own mother’s arms.
From acknowledgements:
FIRST, I SHOULD LIKE to acknowledge the witnesses whom I was lucky enough to hear tell their stories, at great cost to their own peace and comfort, at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, in 2009–10. They were mostly old then; many of them are no longer with us. But a few remain, and in tribute, I will say that if you ever have a chance to hear one of them speak, run, fly, ride, speed-walk to wherever place on this earth that they are still gracing.
September 1, 2021
THE PLUM TREES
WOW... I had such a hard time with this book. I wasn't really aware of what or why, but I just could not connect and keep the momentum going. I thought it would be more of a qualitative read based on the idea that it was the stories of individuals... but ich! I just could not catch a break.
I found much of the book full of voids. I don't know how else to explain this but it seemed there were holes in the emotional fabric of the story. If you are writing about the terrible things that people did to each other, surely that would be evoked.
I thought the language was strange and difficult... I didn't care for the book at all.
2 stars
Happy Reading!
WOW... I had such a hard time with this book. I wasn't really aware of what or why, but I just could not connect and keep the momentum going. I thought it would be more of a qualitative read based on the idea that it was the stories of individuals... but ich! I just could not catch a break.
I found much of the book full of voids. I don't know how else to explain this but it seemed there were holes in the emotional fabric of the story. If you are writing about the terrible things that people did to each other, surely that would be evoked.
I thought the language was strange and difficult... I didn't care for the book at all.
2 stars
Happy Reading!
June 28, 2022
The meat of this was good, but the beginning and end of the story were all over the place. It took forever for her to get to a point and the “present time” portion of the book had a tough time making sense in my brain. And something that annoyed me was throughout the book that she would describe a conversation between people and then throw in snippets of their dialogue randomly.
Research was done very well though and learned more about countries less covered in WWII and It made me feel so very much for the countless families destroyed and lives lost and how it is still affects people generations later.
Research was done very well though and learned more about countries less covered in WWII and It made me feel so very much for the countless families destroyed and lives lost and how it is still affects people generations later.
May 3, 2021
Jarring, well-researched historical move about a family separated in Nazi Germany where three daughters are sent to Auschiwitz. It’s narrated by a woman in modern 2000’s times discovering old family letters from WWII that make her investigate what could’ve happened to the girls’s father, who is the protagonists uncle. It didn’t connect the present to the past that well for me in terms of trying to solve the family mystery of whether or not the uncle escaped - we never seem to find this out which maybe is a nod to the fact that so much was lost snd not resolved and had no good point with this horrific time in history where people we mass murdered and for what? It really inspired me to do more research on the houlocaust as the vivid accounts of the horror in the death camps were just so jarring I needed to learn more than I was ever taught in school. I ended up watching a movie called “Operation Finale” after reading this book which was great - about hunting Nazi leader, Aldof Eichmann who escaped and ran away to Argentina after the war. Anyways a very good read to learn more about the real life conditions in the concentration camps. Just fell slightly short in the connecting it back to the modern times protagonist but I don’t mind that too much since the historical story-telling was so incredibly compelling.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 10, 2021
The Plum Trees is a deep read. Based on the authors’ family history, it’s fiction. However, the delivery is choppy. Readers begin with one character and are abruptly plunged into the meat of story. Then are extracted to go back to the first character. The segue between the parts could have been a lot smoother and would have enhanced the story, but it’s still a compelling read. Thanks to edelweiss and W.W. Norton for the advance read.
May 3, 2021
Managed to plod through 191 pages and decided enough was enough. The initial premise is lost very quickly and the book becomes another in the long list of Holocaust memoirs. My family’s ties to the Holocaust are very real unlike this bogus attempt to portray ... not sure what.
September 26, 2022
Renewal Springs From Within
In an inner story that begins at her Uncle's funeral, the main character sweeps the reader into a world of her own family history research. I think this part was where I was most able to identify, having recently lost a dear Uncle. I didn't find myself as engaged with the family history in the novel beyond that. But, overall it was a well-told story I enjoyed reading. I am not sure whether it would have been more engaging if the story were true. It was the inner-look the author took that I found most engaging.
Victoria Shorr's new fiction novel attempts to reconcile the aging stories of WWII, with the commonplace world around us today. In telling this short tale, the author seems to analyze the question of whether evil is quite so common. The author diligently lays out the threads of Hannah Arendt's ideas on the banality of evil. She asks questions like; What is evil? What is banal? What is sublime? What is the commonplace? What is the everyday? She weaves her novel with the threads of this deeper question of good and evil within mankind. Rather than just telling what happened to her characters, she tries to make you feel their feelings in a here-and-now way.
I found this in hardback at Barnes & Noble. It is short and poignant, certainly worth touching base with some of the ideas Ms. Shorr brings so richly to the subject of the Holocaust and to death itself.
"Death here was in the details."
In an inner story that begins at her Uncle's funeral, the main character sweeps the reader into a world of her own family history research. I think this part was where I was most able to identify, having recently lost a dear Uncle. I didn't find myself as engaged with the family history in the novel beyond that. But, overall it was a well-told story I enjoyed reading. I am not sure whether it would have been more engaging if the story were true. It was the inner-look the author took that I found most engaging.
Victoria Shorr's new fiction novel attempts to reconcile the aging stories of WWII, with the commonplace world around us today. In telling this short tale, the author seems to analyze the question of whether evil is quite so common. The author diligently lays out the threads of Hannah Arendt's ideas on the banality of evil. She asks questions like; What is evil? What is banal? What is sublime? What is the commonplace? What is the everyday? She weaves her novel with the threads of this deeper question of good and evil within mankind. Rather than just telling what happened to her characters, she tries to make you feel their feelings in a here-and-now way.
"...that all deaths might carry within themselves their own escape, touched, possibly,with light, with something freeing... that a man screaming for air in the gas might be singing..."
I found this in hardback at Barnes & Noble. It is short and poignant, certainly worth touching base with some of the ideas Ms. Shorr brings so richly to the subject of the Holocaust and to death itself.
July 16, 2021
This tells a familiar story of a Jewish family who did not leave Europe when they could have before WWII. The novel is moving and upsetting. No matter how often I read about the Holocaust, I learn a few new facts. The awful events are still unbelievable.
January 4, 2021
Afer a family funeral, Consie discovers a letter that contains news that a family member might have escaped from Auschwitz near the end of World War II. She is able to find an old interview with her cousin Magda who survived the war and immigrated to Canada. From there most of the book is Magda's story, but it reads more as non-fiction history, brutal and gruesome, but not much dialogue among her and the other characters. The history of Czechoslovakia starting in the 1930's with the family is enlightening as is the worlds response to Hitler's rising. There is much poignant, factual information and the author says it is based on her family, but I didn't feel a connection to Consie as a fictional character. I received a digital copy of this title from the publisher and NetGalley for an honest review.
March 8, 2021
At the beginning, “The Plum Trees” might seem like any story of someone seeking to unearth a family secret: A conveniently long-lost letter emerges, upending everyone’s assumptions. It’s followed by an equally convenient videotape, and later by an old address book.
In fact, though, the focus of this novel is not the California protagonist Consie’s search to learn whether her Great-Uncle Hermann truly survived Auschwitz. Rather, it becomes a quest to understand the story behind the Holocaust: why ordinary people enabled it, and why some people survived and others didn’t.
Hermann, a successful grain and fruit merchant in prewar Czechoslovakia, and his family manage to survive until 1944 by fleeing to Hungary. But that spring, the Germans invade Hungary, and Hermann’s three daughters are hauled off to Auschwitz. The daughters survive, and one of them will later make the videotape. But Hermann? Could he have escaped, as the long-lost letter says?
The best parts of this novel are the little-told details, such as the naivete that allowed people like Hermann to continue living in Nazi-occupied countries because they believed that the old rules about obeying the laws and a world governed by reason still applied.
In fact, though, the focus of this novel is not the California protagonist Consie’s search to learn whether her Great-Uncle Hermann truly survived Auschwitz. Rather, it becomes a quest to understand the story behind the Holocaust: why ordinary people enabled it, and why some people survived and others didn’t.
Hermann, a successful grain and fruit merchant in prewar Czechoslovakia, and his family manage to survive until 1944 by fleeing to Hungary. But that spring, the Germans invade Hungary, and Hermann’s three daughters are hauled off to Auschwitz. The daughters survive, and one of them will later make the videotape. But Hermann? Could he have escaped, as the long-lost letter says?
The best parts of this novel are the little-told details, such as the naivete that allowed people like Hermann to continue living in Nazi-occupied countries because they believed that the old rules about obeying the laws and a world governed by reason still applied.
October 7, 2021
I KNOW I pulled this book from the fiction section at the library, but it reads more like non-fiction, or a textbook even, than fiction, narrated randomly by a 'main character' whom we never really learned anything about. It ends with a lot of 'deep and meaningful' observations that go nowhere and no conclusion to the story. What the hell did I just read? There was promise here, but it feels like the author didn't know exactly how to go about forming a story. One star for moving accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust and for prompting me to do my usual research while reading novels based on actual events (and in that research I came across articles and testimonials that matched almost word for word parts of this book - hmmmm - felt like the good old days when copying out of an encyclopedia while writing a report in history class). I already have a home library with non-fiction books shelved on World War II and the atrocities it entailed. A positive is that I didn't purchase this book and it's not very long. Summing it up - leave this one on the shelf and move along.
March 24, 2021
This is a remarkable novel. No matter what you know already about the Holocaust you will come away with new insights into the personal horrors of those so unfortunate to be thrust into the center of it- in this case three young Czech sisters who are delivered in a boxcar to the hellscape of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944 and who managed to survive by determination and guile despite the odds. With its lucid and elegant prose and its meticulous, unblinking attention to the frightening details of genocide and torture it left me breathless as I read. The narrative is set in motion with a search by a contemporary California woman for an uncle lost in the Holocaust and rumored to have escaped, but we are soon seeing it from the perspective of those sisters who are captives in the nightmare. Despite the brisk pacing and appealing writing style, this is not light reading, but a deep thoughtful, terrifying work that challenges our ideas of what constitutes humanity,
August 21, 2021
This is a holocaust book that refreshes the horror of the death camps. The main character is researching the possibility that a relative may have escaped Auschwitz and in doing so learns more about the way people were treated by Nazi's. The book is well written and very realistic and I think it's important for people to read things like this to remember how horrible it was and that it actually happened. One fractured country, one crazy man and his stupid, uneducated, racist followers murdered thousands of people. It still boggles my mind and makes me worry for my country. One problem I had with this book is that I am not a big fan of the reader, Xe Sands. The way I choose my next audiobook is usually by just grabbing one that is available through my local library. Couldn't believe that I would get another book read by Sands so soon after another, but she has read lots, so I guess that's bound to happen. I'd still recommend the book.
April 28, 2024
Not at all what the description promised! Consie's "excavation of her family's history" occurs within 30 pages, book-ending a first person, horror upon horror account of Nazi atrocities.
* First, Consie reads the letter, muses "what if" and then digs up her grandmother's old phone book, which she had all along, to make a phone call.
* Consie watches a VHS interview made by Hermann's daughter. This first-person account is the majority of the book.
* Then, Consie goes back to the same phone book, makes another call, visits a descendant and learns Hermann really did die in a concentration camp.
That's it! No digging through archives, deciphering old texts, traveling to distant lands to interview survivors and an exhaustive search for the truth.
Consie. Made. Two. Phone. Calls.
If your soul can't handle another Holocaust story, skip it.
* First, Consie reads the letter, muses "what if" and then digs up her grandmother's old phone book, which she had all along, to make a phone call.
* Consie watches a VHS interview made by Hermann's daughter. This first-person account is the majority of the book.
* Then, Consie goes back to the same phone book, makes another call, visits a descendant and learns Hermann really did die in a concentration camp.
That's it! No digging through archives, deciphering old texts, traveling to distant lands to interview survivors and an exhaustive search for the truth.
Consie. Made. Two. Phone. Calls.
If your soul can't handle another Holocaust story, skip it.
August 15, 2021
While the title sounds like a light read, this book definitely is not. It is about a Jewish family living in Czechoslovakia during WWII. They are well off, the daughters studying in Vienna, the father the owner of a plum farm and several other businesses. When Hitler begins his takeover of Europe, at first they are not worried. But soon, as Hitler's power increases, they are gradually denied many of their normal activities.
The book is difficult to read in large chunks. The descriptions of what was happening to the people, especially after they are "deported" to Auschwitz are very grim. Even so, it is a book I'm glad I read, for now I understand better that terrible time.
The book is difficult to read in large chunks. The descriptions of what was happening to the people, especially after they are "deported" to Auschwitz are very grim. Even so, it is a book I'm glad I read, for now I understand better that terrible time.
March 6, 2021
This is an intense look at war time life among the Nazis. The book is a very emotional read.
October 4, 2022
Victoria Shorr's The Plum Trees is a sobering account of life in Auschwitz, all the fear and degradation, but also about the shielding of life during this horrific time. Consie has flown to Ohio to attend the funeral of her favorite uncle. While there, she reads a letter that he wrote to his parents while he was in Europe when WWII ended. In it, he talks about how he was able to track down two cousins that survived Auschwitz. They tell him about his uncle Hermann who they say escaped from Auschwitz, though no one has heard from him or knows where he is. Consie had never heard this piece of family history before. She is determined to track down any information she can now get about this long lost relative. This leads to a video testimony of one of Hermann's daughters, Magda, as she recounts their family story leading up to being taken away to Auschwitz. Shorr dedicates a major portion of her story to Magda's story. Living in Czecholosovakia, on a farm with plum trees, Hermann is a well-to-do and upright citizen who believes in the power of democracy. Even with the changing winds, even with the slow stripping of their rights, Hermann holds on. Until he can't. A cover-by-night escape to Hungary isn't able to spare them. It's here that Magda and her sisters get separated from their parents, and their stories diverge, and become witness to Magda's plight. While not wallowing in the complete horror of it, Shorr doesn't spare the details. She reminds us with acute clarity what these prisoners went through and endured, often in their own words. But Hermann remains a mystery. Shorr relays the human strength for dignity and survival, represented here by the family's orchard of plum trees, a symbol of better days and beauty. The Final Solution was not final. People, Jews, survived. This is how we never forget, and why we shouldn't.
November 24, 2023
This book does an amazing job of portraying the utter horror, despair, cruelty, and senselessness of the Holocaust. The inner story about Hermann's family and what they went through, from the early rumors of war to the camps, is meticulous and brutal. It really drops you in the moment, terrible and terrifying at it was, with no holds barred. It's the only reason I was able to finish this book: because the outer story, which takes place in the present, is complete trash. We're given the outline of Consie, whose life and actions exist solely to convey the inner story. Her tale is told in stilted, almost contemptuous writing, and it's difficult to connect with or care about this shell of a person. Her thoughts and actions are entirely plot-driven, and as such aren't internally consistent in any kind of believably human way. She's selfish and doesn't care, and then she inexplicably does. Her story is also too sparsely sprinkled throughout the novel to really be connected to the inner (main) story, and so shifts to her sequences are jarring and honestly unappreciated.
Ultimately, although I felt the book was well-resesrched and did an excellent job where the Holocaust was concerned, I wouldn't read anything else from this author. The huge mistep and mishandling of the Consie interludes along with the writing style have me very turned off from her.
There is also another popular book about the Holocaust entitled "The Plum Tree" (singular) that came out 10 years earlier, and I find it hard to believe the author didn't know this. (Publishers check for title sameness before running.) Choosing to just add an "s" and call it a day is, to me, contemptible.
Ultimately, although I felt the book was well-resesrched and did an excellent job where the Holocaust was concerned, I wouldn't read anything else from this author. The huge mistep and mishandling of the Consie interludes along with the writing style have me very turned off from her.
There is also another popular book about the Holocaust entitled "The Plum Tree" (singular) that came out 10 years earlier, and I find it hard to believe the author didn't know this. (Publishers check for title sameness before running.) Choosing to just add an "s" and call it a day is, to me, contemptible.
April 9, 2021
The never-ending number of novels about World War II and/or the Holocaust amazes me. It’s so easy to get behind because numerous new ones are published each month. In fact, I decided not to ask for review copies of six recent works because I already had five novels for this review. While those books might have been wonderful, unless I want to review a World War II/Holocaust-themed novel every week, I have to make tough decisions about which books to ask for. That doesn’t mean I won’t be reviewing more novels on this topic. In fact, I already have another book with a similar theme on my pile, and am looking forward to other works that are scheduled to be published this year. However, as much as I hate to admit it, there are limits to the number of books even I can read and review.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
August 16, 2023
4.25
As someone who studies Holocaust narratives and the teaching of its history in my academic work, I hate “Holocaust fiction.” To romanticize or fictionalize genocide is an offense to me. If you are interested in these stories, I would always say to read memoirs. Reading these accounts is hard, as it should be.
I now have one exception. I picked this book up because it seemed to be more about the excavation of family history and the echoes that the Holocaust created for generations, and it is - but it is also an immersive journey to Auschwitz, a recreation of memories as the main character Consie imagines the possibilities of a relative’s survival and listens to another’s recorded testimony. Reading The Plum Trees is difficult, because of the content and also Consie’s piercing observations. Her thoughts resonated with me deeply.
This one is not satisfying - there are no happy or trite endings. This is about how history has so many gaps, so many empty spaces that we as humans, as innate storytellers, long to fill. We long for satisfactory and sensible narratives, so what do we do when evil is unprecedented and previously unimagined, loss is unfathomable, and horrors continue? We continue, somehow. We remember. We let the sun shine on our faces.
As someone who studies Holocaust narratives and the teaching of its history in my academic work, I hate “Holocaust fiction.” To romanticize or fictionalize genocide is an offense to me. If you are interested in these stories, I would always say to read memoirs. Reading these accounts is hard, as it should be.
I now have one exception. I picked this book up because it seemed to be more about the excavation of family history and the echoes that the Holocaust created for generations, and it is - but it is also an immersive journey to Auschwitz, a recreation of memories as the main character Consie imagines the possibilities of a relative’s survival and listens to another’s recorded testimony. Reading The Plum Trees is difficult, because of the content and also Consie’s piercing observations. Her thoughts resonated with me deeply.
This one is not satisfying - there are no happy or trite endings. This is about how history has so many gaps, so many empty spaces that we as humans, as innate storytellers, long to fill. We long for satisfactory and sensible narratives, so what do we do when evil is unprecedented and previously unimagined, loss is unfathomable, and horrors continue? We continue, somehow. We remember. We let the sun shine on our faces.
March 8, 2021
This book is based on a true story which occurred in the author’s family. It begins with Consie’s favorite uncle who has just died. After the funeral, Consie finds a letter which leads to her finding out more information through an interview with a cousin, Magda. The story really begins here and concentrates on the family in Czechoslovakia during the 1930’s. There are many facts that make it seem as if it were a non-fiction book. I didn’t get a feeling for the character’s lives and didn’t care to read a non-fiction type book. It was well written and the author did a lot of research. I wish to thank the publisher and author for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
June 16, 2021
This book is heavy like a ton of bricks. The middle part, Magda’s story, is a written in a way that I didn’t want to put it down but had to because it was just so intense.
That being said, the beginning and end, before and after Magda’s story, was hard to follow at times. The beginning (and synopsis) really made you think this was going to be about finding Hermann, and his story. But he almost felt like an after thought at times. The book is really two tales, Magda’s experience, and the attempt at finding out whatever happened to Hermann. It didn’t seem to come together flawlessly.
However, if you can get through the confusion of the first couple chapters, this is an important read.
That being said, the beginning and end, before and after Magda’s story, was hard to follow at times. The beginning (and synopsis) really made you think this was going to be about finding Hermann, and his story. But he almost felt like an after thought at times. The book is really two tales, Magda’s experience, and the attempt at finding out whatever happened to Hermann. It didn’t seem to come together flawlessly.
However, if you can get through the confusion of the first couple chapters, this is an important read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 25, 2021
Parts of the book really resonated with me. The not knowing. The excusing. The sudden realization that you were wrong.
Parts of the book were emotionally wrenching. The train. The depot. The ... Auschwitz. All of Auschwitz.
Parts of the book really missed the mark for me. Consie. She just didn't connect properly. Her emotions were valid and strong but she felt as deeply disconnected from Hermann and his family, as if she was a complete stranger, a historian.
Did it bother me that the author never named her characters as Jewish? No. It forcibly stripped the othering from the story. Hermann and Magda went from "definitely not me," to "this could have been me."
Parts of the book were emotionally wrenching. The train. The depot. The ... Auschwitz. All of Auschwitz.
Parts of the book really missed the mark for me. Consie. She just didn't connect properly. Her emotions were valid and strong but she felt as deeply disconnected from Hermann and his family, as if she was a complete stranger, a historian.
Did it bother me that the author never named her characters as Jewish? No. It forcibly stripped the othering from the story. Hermann and Magda went from "definitely not me," to "this could have been me."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2023
Unlike other reviewers, I liked the way the author approached the story. History is not black and white, nor does it travel in a straight line. It takes detours and has dead ends. It gets lost. Mysteries remain unsolved. As many Holocaust books, fiction and non, that I have read, I still learn something from each one. And with each one I think about how little we humans have learned.
The three sisters’ part of story was the most compelling for me, but I admired the entire book. No matter how many times the story of how a nation’s madness almost destroyed an entire culture, it is worth hearing again.
The three sisters’ part of story was the most compelling for me, but I admired the entire book. No matter how many times the story of how a nation’s madness almost destroyed an entire culture, it is worth hearing again.
July 29, 2023
I do not have great knowledge of these times but I had enough to know I respected this part of history enough to learn more and listen more. I really enjoyed reading this book and getting an inside feel of what this experience really was. This book has a lot of pain but a lot of beauty too. There is hope in the ending. I love how the title really is embedded in the book. The perspectives of the characters were great and I like that it did not stick to just one but was able to include multiple. I think the author did a great job. I definitely would recommend this book.
September 20, 2023
This book was raw and filled with disappointments—which should not come as much of a surprise from a book about the horrors of the Holocaust. I have read my fair share of WW2 fiction, but this felt the most real. There was no sugarcoating and no happy ends. No surprise reunions. Not a single answer to a sea of whys. This book could harden your heart, but it can also show you how the survivors of the Holocaust should be seen as heroes and not victims.
Keep an eye out for my full review at www.thebooknookchronicles.com
Keep an eye out for my full review at www.thebooknookchronicles.com
Want to Read
February 16, 2021I am having a hard time following the thread of this story (I am just on page 54). After reading the other reviews, I know it's not just me! At one point Consie is watching a video of Magda (Hermann's daughter) being interviewed to discuss Hermann who shares a story told to him by a student who witnessed Kristallnacht. It is jumping around quite a bit, but the story being told is interesting enough that I will probably keep going with it!
May 19, 2021
Very compelling and painful story of first hand experiences of the Holocaust and Auschwitz. ( So much better that "The Tattooist of Auschwitz which portrays the protagonists as freely moving about the camp and doing things that would have been incredibly unlikely. ) This narrative does not sugar coat the horrors of the Holocaust and leaves the protagonists wondering, where is god? Well written. Recommend. Kristi & Abby Tabby
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