The atrocities committed against the Jewish people in Europe during World War II are well-covered ground in the literary world. The history of the Jewish genocide is well-documented in history books, and the human toll of the war and its depravity are demonstrated through the thousands of fictional accounts that have been written in the decades since the concentration camps were liberated. This is as it should be. The extreme example of xenophobia, greed, and racism displayed by Hitler and his Nazi followers is something that should never be forgotten.

(We often say that the Holocaust should be remembered so that we as a global community can make sure it never happens again. Sadly, we as a human family have failed in this aspiration time and time again-the Rwandan genocide, the crisis in Darfur, and the massacre at Srebrenica are but a few of the examples of modern day ethnic or religious violence.)

While the experiences of the Jewish people of Europe during the Holocaust is very well known, less talked about are the experiences of other groups that were persecuted and brutalized by the Nazis. Physically and mentally disabled children, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Roma people, and homosexuals were some of the groups that were singled out for "special" treatment. It is the Roma, known pejoratively as Gypsies, that are the subject of the book Snow Moon Rising.

The Roma people were a nomadic group, traveling the roads between European countries in large family groups called kumpania. The kumpania, made up of caravans and carts which were both the homes and workplaces of the Roma people, traveled from village to village, finding work when possible, hunting and gathering when work was hard to find. Some members of the caravans became artisans and craftsmen, selling their wares along the way.

Unfortunately, the Roma developed a reputation as thieves and con men. During the early part of the 20th century, many countries had laws banning the Roma people from traveling to certain places, or from being allowed to do certain jobs in the community. There was a deep distrust of the Roma, who were seen as a race separate from the "purer" European people, and were considered inferior, much like the Jews were.

It is into this culture that we are dropped when we read Snow Moon Rising. The book follows two

women, Mischka and Pippi, during the time period from World War I through World War II. Mischka is a young Roma girl at the beginning of the book, already chaffing against the rigid gender expectations of her clan. Pippi is the sister of a young German soldier who is rescued by Mischka's kumpania after he stumbles away from a bloody battle. Mischka and Pippi meet and become bonded in a way that is more than just friendship. Fast forward to World War II, and Mischka ends up in a German labor camp. Pippi, who must pretend to be a a German loyal to Hitler to survive, is sent ot the camp to oversee the production of uniforms for German soldiers. Here, the two women are reunited, and must work together to ensure that the prisoners get out of the camp alive. But the end of the war is not the end of the challenges for these women, because Europe is soon divided between the Soviets and the rest of the western world. Will Mischka and Pippi find a way to be together?

I found the description of the Roma way of life and the persecution they suffered fascinating. It also led me to many a discussion during this Halloween season as to why "gypsy" costumes were maybe not a good idea. Aside from being an exploration of the experiences of the Roma during the first half of the 20th century, this book is a lesbian love story. Mischka and Pippi take turns telling the story, which is actually a series of flashbacks spun out over the course of one evening to their grandson, who has never heard the story of his family's journey to America. Aside from the Roma history I learned, I appreciated an insight into what the life of the average German may have been during World War II. The final scenes of the book left me in tears for all the right reasons.

The Lost Wife, In Which We Learn Once Again the Evils of the Holocaust

If there is one era of human history that has been well documented and analyzed and memorialized in books and film, it is the Holocaust.  And rightfully so.  The tragic events of that time, perpetrated with such callous disregard for all that is good and right about the world, deserves to be kept alive in our memories, if only to remind us never to let the evils of racism and xenophobia on that scale happen again.  Of course, it has happened again-in Rwanda, and Darfur, and Srebrenica-but most of the Western world at least has heeded the lessons of the Holocaust and has responded fairly quickly and decisively to any hint of the rise of neo-nazism or ethnic hatred.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I belong to a denomination that believes in radical inclusion.  One of our central beliefs is the right of all people to determine their own path to the divine, to search for their own truth and meaning through a variety of theological or ethical beliefs.  And as a youth advisor, I spend a great deal of my time discussing our faith tradition with my youth.  Whenever we talk about inclusion and acceptance, we inevitably get around to "the Hitler Question", as one of my youth put it.  Would we as accepting, radically inclusive Unitarian Universalists accept Adolf Hitler?  The answer, of course, is that we would never be put into that position, as Hitler would not have been likely to associate with a progressive church that loves Jews and gays, but also because everything he stood for was antithetical to the Untiarian Universalist principles.  But Hitler, for all of his evil, was also perhaps one of the most successful manipulators of public opinion in history.  In The Lost Wife, by Alyson Richman, we are offered as proof of this manipulation in the form of the Terezin, a prison work camp for Czechoslovakian Jews that also served as a way station for Jews headed to Aushwitz.

The Lost Wife begins with a recognition-Josef, in his 80s, meets an elderly woman at his grandson's wedding who seems very familiar.  It is not until he sees the numbers tattooed on her arm that he begins to suspect that she could be his long-lost wife, Lenka-a woman he thought died in Auschwitz over 60 years before.  The rest of the novel details their lives in Czechoslovakia, from growing up privileged pre-occupation to the terrible run up to the war, to the camp and to America.  Josef, a doctor, escapes to American, promising to send for Lenka and her family.  Lenka is sent with her sister and parents to Terezin, a work camp that was used as a cover for the Nazi's real agenda-the extermination of the Jewish people.  Because of the chaos that ensued, both Josef and Lenka believed that the other had perished, until that fateful night when Josef's grandson was to marry Lenka's granddaughter.

For me the book was an education in the way the Nazi's attempted to keep the world in the dark about what was happening in the concentration camps.  Built specifically as a ghetto, meant to hold 5,000 people, was home to up to 55,000 at a time.  A film was made about the town, proclaiming to the world that the Nazi's had built a "city for the Jews".  The one time that the Red Cross was allowed to visit, the ghetto was dressed up along the route the officials would take, with prisoners given extra food to make them look healthier, allowed to bathe and given new clothes.  The shop windows were filled with goods, which were immediately taken away when the Red Cross left.

One of the things that made the camp unusual was the incredible number of artists of various kinds that were housed there.  Richman said that part of her motivation behind writing the book was to tell the story of the Holocaust from the point of view of an artist.  Lenka was a painter, and she was given work with other artists making art that the Nazi's sold to help fund their war effort.  But that was not the only art that made it out of the camp.  Many artists stole painting supplies and smuggled out pictures of what was really going on in Terezin.  There were also many musicians in the camp, and there were operas and plays and concerts performed whenever a group could find a secret place to hold them.  The Lost Wife, while being a testament to the enduring power of true love, also shows the triumph of the human spirit and artistic endeavor over pain, fear, powerlessness, and violence.

Poison Spreads-The Book Thief

Both of my grandfathers fought in World War II.  And that is about all I know-neither of my grandfathers would talk about that time.  Perhaps that's why stories about World War II had always held a fascination for me.  In my teens, I read all of James Michener's books about his time in Japan.  I also discovered books like When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Number the Stars, and of course The Diary of Anne Frank.  I've watched countless documentaries and movies about the Holocaust.  And when I think about World War II, the images I have in my mind are of concentration camps and ovens.  But now I have a new vision to add to my understanding of the madness that was Hilter's Germany.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak takes place during World War II, and tells the story of 10 year old Liesel.  Her mother is forced to place her children into foster care.  Liesel's brother dies on the train taking her to Munich, where she is given into the care of a couple on Himmler Street.  Through the tough love of her foster mother, and the sweet compassion of her foster father, she finds a way to cope with not only her brothers death but the quickly declining standard of living in Germany.  Things go along OK, until the dark night that a Jew shows up at their door looking for sanctuary.

Despite the tragedy and the devastation contained within the story, when I think of a word to describe this book I can only say beautiful.  This book is so heartbreakingly beautiful, I could almost weep just from the use of language.  But the story is so compelling that even if it weren't written so beautifully I would have had a hard time putting it down.  So often books about World War II focus solely on the fate of the Jews-and rightfully so.  There is nothing so important as ensuring that the world never experiences that level of genocide-or any genocide-again.  But the fact is that most of the German people were suffering as well, and this book shows so clearly how the poison of hatred and fear spreads, and how it takes an incredible strength not to give in to the despair.  Despite the constant threat of being found out, of starvation, of being killed by bombs, Liesel and her parents held on to their humanity and compassion.

Night, Elie Wiesel

I'm not sure there are enough words in the English language to describe the horror, sadness, and desolation that is contained in the 109 pages of Night, Elie Wiesel's memoir of his time in the concentration camps.

In 1944, Germany is clearly losing World War II, and Hitler has escalated his plan to exterminate the Jews.  German troops begin to go into areas previously left pretty well alone, and round up Jews from the small towns in the countryside.  Wiesel's family, along with all of their neighbors, are rounded up and sent to Auschwitz.  Being loaded into boxcars, traveling for days with little food and water, watching the weak die, and being separated from this mother and sister, while terrible enough, was nothing compared to the horrors that confronted him and his father at the camp.

The most striking thing about this book was the spare language that Wiesel uses, and the complete heartwrenching sadness I felt while reading it.  Wiesel packs a lot of emotional wallop into a small number of pages.  I think that the fact that he writes about his experiences in the way that he does only adds to the mood of devestation and tragedy.  Frankly, the horrors of the camp don't need elaborate language or vivid metaphor.  A stark retelling is all that is needed to see the terrible price that those in the camps paid for the world's inability to stop the evil that was Hitler before he became powerful enough to wreak such destruction.  Perhaps the most chilling thing about Wiesel's story is how quickly the men he was imprisoned with became used to the deplorable conditions in which they found themselves.  Every day that they were not sent to the furnaces was a relief-they only had to go to their physically demanding and dangerous jobs where they were forced to work on little or no food, sick or injured, in the heat or freezing cold, to be abused and demeaned by the guards.  In the end I was left feeling that had the Russians not liberated the camps when they did, Wiesel and the rest of the prisoners would have eventually been worn away by brutality to nothing-no emotion, no intellect, no humanity left.