What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

I've recently read The Nightingale and also spent some time reading the true stories of "Righteous Among the Nations" (i.e. www.YadVashem.org) and I started wondering about other fiction books where part of the story is about non-Jewish families who worked to save Jews (as they went about their daily lives.)

I have also read: Vienna Prelude and the Zion Covenant/Zion Chronicle series by Bodie Thoene, From Dust and Ashes: A Story of Liberation by Tricia Goyer, Number the Stars, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Sarah's Key, The Book Thief as well as famous non-fiction books/memoirs such as Anne Frank and the related memoir by Gies Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family, The Hiding Place, and books about Oscar Schindler, Wallenberg, etc.. (And other Nazis who didn't necessarily save anyone -- Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer -- and other Holocaust/Nazi History books like Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics and The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust and The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans.)

What are some other fiction books (in English) that tell the story of non-Jews who risked their lives to hide Jews or otherwise existed/lived during Nazi Germany, Nazi Austria, or other Nazi-occuppied countries?

Thanks in advance for suggestions!

(Edit to add other books I have read.)

The Book Thief
Ausländer

Thanks -- forgot about The Book Thief, which I have read. I'll have to look up the other one and see if i've read it. Thanks for suggestions!

Well, this isn't fiction, and it's not about civilians who risked their lives (because there was no need, the authorities had already seen to that), and it didn't happen in an occupied country: Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland's Jews

BUT I think it's an interesting story nevertheless of which most people are not aware because it is about Jews (the only book I know about the subject in English, I don't know how good it is) and how they lived during WWII as ordinary citizens among the Christian majority, serving their country just like everyone else, and even having a field synagogue at the front... a couple of kilometres from the German troops, who were stationed there because they were fighting against the common enemy (the Soviet Union). And how German soldiers may have sometimes found themselves saluting a higher ranking Jewish officer who had no problem revealing that fact, or that three Jewish Finns were awarded with the German Iron Cross which they of course refused to accept.

Here is a article about this: http://www.jewishquarterly.org/issuea...
And here's a short newsclip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OGMP...
Another article, it's biased IMO but there are some good pictures: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/mu...

You might like My Mother's Secret.

Life and Fate might be up your alley. Grossman was a reporter on the Russian front lines thru most of the war, and he was one of the first reporters to provide eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust. Life and Fate is his magnum opus, a panoramic novel that plays out over the siege of Stalingrad, but spans across Russia, including places occupied by Nazi forces.

One of the major plot threads is the growing threat of anti-semitism within the Soviet Union as seen through the eyes of a Russian Jewish physicist. This character is something of a stand-in for Grossman himself, whose mother was also trapped within Nazi territory. The panorama allows Grossman to share his wartime experiences, but also leaves plenty of room for plenty of the everyday experiences of this time.

You must read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

Anya by susan fromberg Schaeffer

Bonnie -- another book I'd forgotten I'd read -- The Hiding Place. My mother read that to me when I was growing up. But the Schaeffer book I do not think I have read, so thanks for more suggestions!

Added My Mothers Secret and Auslander to my list to read; thanks Liralen and Valerie

Kaoin and Tytti -- thanks for your suggestions also. I'll put them on my radar too !

In My Hands Irene Opdyke

Twenty and Ten is a middle grade book about this idea. I read it as a kid back in the 60's--then gave it to my daughter and now my grandsons to read also.

Thanks!

I might add My Enemy's Cradle to my own query...

A Nazi girl saves her Jewish friend and her family in Doris Orgel's The Devil in Vienna. It's a lot more sophisticated narrative than it might appear.

Thank you Astraea, that sounds interesting also.

Just ran across The Girl With No Name and The Runaway Family which might fit

Star of Danger
by Jane Whitbread Levin

This occurs in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay but it's not the main focus of the plot. The Kavalier character is a Czech refugee who escapes to New York in a very unusual way, and later tries to rescue his brother along with some other Jewish children.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project

Schindler's List
A Girl From Schindlers List
Wartime Lies
The Complete Maus

This is not fiction but... Orchestra of Exiles: The Story of Bronislaw Huberman, the Israel Philharmonic, and the One Thousand Jews He Saved from Nazi Horrors .

Thanks for new recs, all.

I just ran across All My Love, Detrick

The Paris architect

The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman
It's not precisely about saving the Jews, but the theme is also there, if I remember precisely. Ignore the blurb, and read some goodreads reviews to find out, what kind of book it is.

Not fiction, but I feel like any list of books about Jews during the Holocaust would be incomplete without Night, if you haven't read that already!

between shades of gray is an amazing book along with the book thief

Erin wrote: "between shades of gray is an amazing book"

It just isn't about Jews, the holocaust, or saving anyone.

Soul of Wood is kind of a strange one. It's a novella, packaged with some other short stories which are also Holocaust or war-related.

The MC is a male nurse, gentile, of a paralyzed teenage Jewish boy. The boy's parents are taken away and killed in the gas chamber. The nurse smuggles the teen out of town in a big box and takes him to a mountain hut he owns, and leaves him there with some food. At that point magical realism takes over in the hut. The nurse goes back to the city and is soon imprisoned in an insane asylum where the Nazis are giving lethal injections to the patients. Several years go by, the end of the war approaches and everyone realizes that if they can point to a Jew they saved from death, they will be well treated by the victorious Allies and not jailed or killed or whatnot. The problem is the nurse has told several Nazis at the asylum about this Jew he saved, and they all head to the mountain to retrieve the teenager so they can look good.

In a way the author's story is even more interesting, because he was a Jewish war survivor who fled the Nazis as a teen and lived as a gentile, doing various jobs and even working for a Nazi organization or company at one point.