Austria in WWII: ‘The Secret Society of Salzburg’ by Renee Ryan
This historical fiction book opens with the arrest by the Gestapo of acclaimed and loved Austrian opera singer Elsa Mayer-Braun, on a stage in Salzburg in 1943. So, an early heads up of what one of the two main characters has to deal with.
From here the narrative weaves back and forth in time, and also across the English Channel, from the Continent to London, where we meet the other protagonist Hattie, who works in a dull civil service office, but longs to paint.
An unlikely pair of women to put together, but that is what the author does, as a chance meeting develops into a deep friendship between the two. Hattie travels to Austria with her sister to see Elsa perform and the sisters become stalwart fans of Elsa and her operas.
But of course war is coming and once their nations are at war, everything changes – except the women’s determination to carry out the secretive work of smuggling Jews out of Austria to England. Both Elsa and Hattie will not stop these life-saving rescue missions, despite the ever-increasing danger involved.
While Hattie’s artistic career takes off and Elsa travels Europe to perform – including singing for some high ranking Nazi officers – their secret missions ramp up.
As the tension mounts the reader is left guessing: is Elsa’s husband a threat or an ally? Who is the art dealer who supports Hattie’s artistic success and may just be falling in love with her? Will Elsa’s deep secrets be kept hidden or discovered by the Nazi heirarchy?
I loved that this story was inspired by real-life English sisters, civil servants who learned of the persecution of Jews through a freindship with an Austrian conductor and his wife. In my view, the best kind of historical fiction is that which touches on real people or events.
The Secret Society of Salzburg gives an insight into the experiences of Austrians in the lead-up and the early years of the war and Nazi occupation. It’s an engrossing story, well told.
The Secret Society of Salzburg was published in November 2023 by HarperCollins. My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.
Profound: ‘I Seek a Kind Person’ by Julian Borger
Imagine for a moment you are the parent of a youngster after the takeover of Austria by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. As conditions for Jewish families continue to worsen, you make the – incredible – decision to advertise in a British newspaper, hoping that someone – some kind person – will take in your son or daughter and look after them until their homeland is once again safe to live in.
That’s the story of author and Guardian World Affairs Editor Julian Borger’s father, Robert, who was advertised like this in the Manchester Guardian in August 1938. It was after the horror of Kristallnacht, (‘the night of broken glass’) when Jewish homes and businesses were smashed, looted and their occupants attacked. Young Robert himself was chased through the streets by a gang of Nazi bullies. His father came to the conclusion that Robert was not safe in Austria and for his own protection, needed to be sent abroad.
The book opens with Robert’s suicide in 1983. No spoiler there; the reader knows immediately that there is no ‘happy ever after’ in this story. What Julian did, decades later, was to discover the history of the advertisement of his father and many other Viennese children, and attempt to trace the experiences of seven of them.
The result is a grim, profound, at times almost unbearably moving story of the children, set against Jewish experiences in Vienna, especially in the time leading up to, during and after the Anschluss. Their experiences were varied, seemingly almost on the toss of a coin or a turn of fate (not all foster families were kind, as it turned out.) Surprisingly, some of the refugee children and some of their families ended up in far flung places: the Netherlands, Shanghai, in France working undercover in the Resistance, Wales.
For historians, especially family historians, it’s absorbing to read about the author’s investigations, brick walls and cold trails, sometimes followed by unexpected gems of information that allowed him to continue his research.
The book is also an interrogation of trauma.
The unhappiness and anxiety of youngster sent far from home to an uncertain future.
The trauma of those sent to the concentration camps, which the author describes as having to ‘learn to survive in a vast industrial enterprise dedicated to murder.’ (p177)
The ‘survivor guilt’ and silence of those who, usually by chance, avoided the camps: ‘We did not suffer from the cold and hunger and therefore our suffering does not come close to the suffering of the children of the ghettos and camps. That’s why we did not often tell our story.’ (p237)
And of course, the trauma handed down to the next generation: ‘We may want to let go of history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean history is finished with us…So maybe man hands on misery to man after all, though the reality is not entirely bleak, or we would all be wrecks.’ (p30)I Seek a Kind Person is a fascinating glimpse of the WWII experiences of a relatively small but representative group of Jewish people from one part of Europe that is both compelling and distressing. Beautifully and sensitively written, I highly recommend this book to any readers interested in knowing more about the real experiences of people in this war.
I Seek a Kind Person was published in 2024 by John Murray Publishers, an imprint of Hachette.
