Books Set in Europe, Netherlands

The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Edward Dolnick (2008)

Read:  July 20, 2025

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe: Rome, Italy

Eternal, by Lisa Scottoline (2021)

This novel is about Italy during World War II, Fascism and the treatment of Jews.

Although the novel was historically correct, I didn't care for the characters.  (It even addresses Syndrome K, which was how Catholic doctors saved a number of Jews by convincing the Nazis that the Jews were infected with a highly contagious disease called Syndrome K).

The plot revolved around three teenagers:  Sandro, Marco and Elisabetta.  They have been friends from childhood.  The two boys vie for Elisabetta, who professes to love them both.  Marco and Elizabetta are both Catholic; Sandro is Jewish.  Sandro's father initially supported Mussolini, until Germany invaded Italy and Jews were forced into the Ghetto, then the camps.

The story line with Sandro, Marco, and Elisabetta didn't ring true.

Read:  September 3, 2023

3 Stars

Books Set in Europe; Tuscany, Italy

The Light in the Ruins, by Chris Bohjalian (2013)

 

The action of the novel The Light in Ruins, takes place in the last years of World War II in Tuscany, Italy and again 10 years later.  The novel opens with the murder of Francesca Rosati in the 1950s.  She had formerly been the aristocratic wife of a wealthy family in Tuscany.  She was found with her throat cut and her heard removed.  Soon thereafter, another member of the family is murdered in a similar MO.

 

Detective Serafina Bettini was assigned to investigate Francesca’s murder.  When another member of the Rosati family is murdered in a similar manner to Francesca, Sarafina believes there is a link which is related to the family’s activity during the War.  The Rosati family had been coerced to host Nazi and Fascist forces during the final days of the War.

 

On the Rosati estate were underground ancient Etruscan ruins and tombs.  Filled with ancient artifact, the Nazi’s professed an interest in the relics, but had an ulterior motive of sending the valuables back to Nazi leaders.

 

Serafina, who had been a partisan during the War, suffered severe burns, the scars of which caused her to be self-conscious.  Her investigation brings her to the Rosati estate, which triggers vague memories of her participation during the War.

 

During the final days of the War, the Rosatis family was forced to host the Nazis and the Fascists.  Ancient Etruscan ruins and underground tombs were located on the grounds of their estate.  The Nazi’s profess an interest in the tombs but have an ulterior motive of sending valuable relics back to their leaders.

 

Meanwhile, Cristina Rosati, the 18-year-old daughter, fell in love with a Nazi soldier.  This did not endear her to her family or to the local villagers.

 

Serafina’s investigation of the murders forces her to face her own ghosts from the war.  I didn’t find the ending completely satisfying, but the novel held my interest.

 

Read:  September 14, 2022

 

3.5 Stars

Books Set in Europe and North America: Germany and Alabama, United States

The German Wife, by Kelly Rimmer (2022)

Read:  August 28, 2022

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe; Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, by Rosemary Sullivan (2022)

 

In August 1944, a German SS officer received a telephone tip of Jews hiding in a building located at Prinsengracht 263.  The exact details of the raid on the address have been lost to history, but the raid resulted in the capture of the Frank family and 4 other individuals who had been in hiding in the Annex for the past 2 years.  Anne, her sister Margot, and her mother did not survive the concentration camp where they had been deported.  Anne’s father, Otto, did survive.  Anne’s diary also survived.  With the publication of her diary, Anne became a symbol of the millions who died at the hands of the Nazis.

 

This book attempts to answer the question of who betrayed the secret hiding place?  In 2016, a team of forensic scientists, a former FBI agent, historians, and others, was put together to comb through hundreds of documents, interviews, and other evidence to find the answer … or at least an answer.  This book is the story of the evidence compiled by the Cold Case Team.

 

The author notes that the Netherlands was responsible deporting more Jews to concentration camps than other European countries.  Near the beginning of German Occupation, a Jewish Council, made up of Jews, was formed, ostensibly to help the Jews of the Netherlands and fend off anti-Jewish actions.  Soon, however, the Council was ordered to help organize the selection of Jewish deportees to concentration camps.  The Cold Case team extensively examined the pasts of the members of the Council for clues to see if one could have betrayed the Franks.

 

Members of the Council would have had access to lists of addresses where Jews of the Netherlands might be.  Thus, Council members could have retained such lists as insurance to be used to save their lives, leading to the conclusion that another Jew betrayed the Franks.  The Cold Case Team seems to ignore the fact that whether or not a Council member was the betrayer of the Franks, the Council members certainly betrayed hundreds of other fellow Jews.

 

The book examined a number of possible betrayers and the Cold Case Team eliminated them one-by-one, until singling one out.  The suspect was a member of the Jewish Council, thus would have access to addresses of hiding places.  The Cold Case Team believed that Otto Frank knew his betrayer, but for reasons known only to himself, kept his identity to himself.

 

The Team concluded that a man named Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary, was the most likely betrayer.  He is believed to have had a list of at least 500 names, which he may have been holding as insurance to be used to save his life and that of his family.

 

I have mixed feelings about this book.  Clearly, a lot of time and money was spent searching for the betrayer of the Frank family.  There are many, many characters in this book, which makes it a bit confusing, especially since many names and titles are non-English.  But does find out out who actually betrayed one family, when so many families were betrayed really matter?  The take-away is that when faced with a life-or-death situation, one might easily betray another to save one’s self.

 

Read:  February 21, 2022

 

3 Stars

 

Books Set in Europe: Germany and Poland: Auschwitz

Auschwitz Lullaby, by Mario Escoabar (2018)

 

This novel is based on the true life of Helene Hannemann, a German housewife who married a Roma and had five children.  One morning in early 1943, the German police arrived at her door to take her husband and children away.  Although, because she was German and was eligible to stay safe, she couldn’t leave her husband and family.  They were told they were being sent to a relocation camp for Gypsies.  Instead, they were loaded onto cattle cars and shipped to Auschwitz.

 

Helene and her husband (called Johann in the book, although his name was actually Max) were separated.  The children, all under the age of 12, were allowed to stay with Helene in the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz.  They were separated from the Jewish population and received marginally better treatment.

 

Because she was a trained nurse, Helene was soon recruited into the camp hospital.  There she encountered Josef Mengele.  Partially to impress his higher-ups, Mengele appointed Helene to create a nursery school for the Romani children.  She is given paint, toys, school supplies and food for the nursery school.  She was also allowed to select some assistants to help with the children to give them as care-free a childhood as possible.  As the War continues, food for the nursery becomes scarcer and Helene encounters Mengele’s wrath when she asks for more.

 

This novel takes place in the span of about a year.  It gives a glimpse of the horrors of living in the concentration camp from the point of the Romani.  The book, however, was bookended, by reflections by Dr. Mengele.  Perhaps it was an attempt to “humanize” him, but I found it very disturbing.

 

Read:  April 6, 2021

 

3.5 Stars

 

Books Set in Europe: Paris, France

The Room on Rue Amélie, by Kristin Harmel (2018)

The Room on Rue Amélie reads like a young adult sanitized version of Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II.

The novel focuses on Ruby Henderson Benoit, a young American woman who meets the French Marcel Benoit in a coffee shop in New York and marries him 6 months later.  They move to Paris in the late 1930s against her parent’s objections.  She is determined to become a true Parisian.  (She had learned French in school and can apparently speak a passable version of the language, albeit with an accent.)

Her marriage soon sours.  Marcel spends long hours away from their apartment and never explains his absences.  Since his character was not developed, we don’t know why Ruby fell for him in the first place, other than he was very handsome.  We do learn, however, that he is involved in the French resistance and has been hiding downed Allied pilots in a secret room in the hallway of their apartment building.  Marcel doesn’t want his wife to be involved in the Resistance, she wants to feel useful in the War effort.  She learns of the secret room and becomes involved in the escape line for downed pilots.

When the RAF pilot, Thomas, appears at her door, she falls head-over-heels in love.  The author doesn’t explain the attraction.  Why this pilot?  She harbors numerous downed soldiers.  We learn as much of some of the other soldiers as we do Thomas.

A Jewish family lives in the apartment next door.  Young Charlotte befriends Ruby.  When the French police round up Jewish families, Ruby promises Charlotte’s parents she will take care of her should anything happen.  Soon young Charlotte, who is forced to grow up very quickly, becomes involved in the resistance as well.

This was a very quick read, and something that I could see myself enjoying when I was about 12 years old.  The characters were not fully developed and the book did not depict the actual horrors and fears of living in Paris during the Nazi occupation.

Read:  July 6, 2020

3 Stars

Books Set in Europe: France, Austria, and England

The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal (2010)

The Hare with Amber Eyes is a memoir of the author’s paternal ancestors, who were once of the wealthy European Jewish Ephrussi’s of the banking dynasty.  The memoir starts with a telling of the author’s great-uncle Charles Ephrussi, an art collector in Paris.  In the 1870’s, Charles acquired over 260 Japanese netsuke, the small wood and ivory carvings of plants and animals.  One of the netsuke was a hare with amber eyes, hence the title of the book.

Charles gave the netsuke to his Viennese cousin, Viktor Ephrussi, as a wedding present.  Viktor was the author’s great-grandfather, which is how the items came into the possession of the author’s family.

Because the Ephrussi’s were Jewish, albeit secular, during the Nazi regime and World War II, they lost everything, including the extensive art collection.  Amazingly, the netsuke survived and remained in the family.  (We learn the story of their survival in the book.)  The author inherited the netsuke collection, which led him to explore his family’s history.

His grandmother, Elizabeth Ephurssi, converted to Anglican Church when she married the Dutch Hendrik de Waal.  The author father, Elizabeth’s son, became an Anglican priest, thus the memoir is in part a search into the author’s Jewish past.  I found it a rather uncomfortable search.

I read this book because it was a selection of one of my book discussion groups.

Read:  November 4, 2018

2 Stars

Books Set in Europe and the United States

The Fortunate Ones, by Ellen Umansky (2017)

This novel travels back in time between the life of young Rose Zimmer, who was a young girl living in Vienna at the beginning of World War II, and the mid-2000s, when she is an old woman living in Los Angeles.  One of her earliest memories is of her mother, who, after suffering a miscarriage, asked that the painting The Bellhop, by Chain Soutine, be brought to her room.

At the time, young Rose thought the painting was ugly and couldn’t understand her mother’s attracting to the painting.  The image of her mother and the painting, however, stayed with her.  By 1939, it was dangerous for Jews living in Austria.  Although her parents couldn’t leave the country, they were able to get their children, Rose and her older brother, out via the Kindertransportto England.

After the War, Rose married and moved to Los Angeles.  The painting, however, was lost.  

Enter Liz Goldstein.  She came from a broken family and lived part time her mother until her death.  Then she moved to Los Angeles to live with her father.  Hanging in his elaborate home was the Soutine.  One night, when Liz’s father was out of town, the teenage Liz decided to take advantage of his absence and threw a wild party in his house.  Come morning, the Soutine was missing.  Liz held herself personally responsible for this loss.

Liz grew up and was living in New York when she learned her father had passed away. She returned to Los Angeles for the funeral, where she met Rose.  Rose was an acquaintance of Liz’s father.  They became friends over the lost Soutine, which each had lost in their own way.  Liz decided to reopen the case of the lost painting and promised to help Rose get restitution for the loss.

The lost painting causes both Rose and Liz to feel guilt over the lost painting and reminisce about their dead parents.  Is there a mystery over the second theft of the painting?

The book started out strong, but lost steam mid-way.  I wanted to know more about Rose’s life after arriving in England. We learn that she and her brother are separated, and get the feeling that she didn’t fit into her new family very well.  This wasn’t well developed, however, and later in the book, we learn that her adopted family took pains to see that she was well educated.  Liz’s relationship with Max, her father’s former business partner fell flat.

This was a quick read, but ultimately, I was left unsatisfied.

Read: September 8, 2018

3 Stars