The past is myself
by
This semi-autobiographical, eye-witness account of an educated, German-speaking Englishwoman and wife of a German lawyer from Hamburg, who was caught up in the Nazi period, through and including her husband's arrest after the failed assassination plot against Hitler of July, 1944, and to and after the Reich's defeat at the hands, in the area in which they lived, of the Allies (Anglo-American and, later, during the occupation, French troops), is excellent.
Because it is an eyewitness account, by an educated, anti-Nazi woman who was having a family (three sons, all born in Germany, where she became a citizen and permanent resident after 1934) during the time covered in the book (1934-45), and because she has a marvelous eye and ear, being fluent in German, for the everyday events and horrors of the war, leavened by her husband's peripheral role in the July, 1944 unsuccessful assassination plot and his subsequent arrest and incarceration at Ravensbruck concentration camp, it is fascinating, not to mention very educational. You get the repeated feeling that 'she was there,' making the book an invaluable aid in learning about and understanding the Second World War from the vantage point of a Germanized foreign woman who was forced to live through it. I recommend it highly to anyone, male or female, who is interested in the period. As a bonus, there is, somewhere in the archives of British TV, a dramatization of the book. Moreover, Frau Bielenberg is featured as a 'talking head' on one of the 25 or 26 episodes of ' The World at War,' the 1970s Laurence Olivier-narrated series.
