GERMAN BOY

First-time memoirist Samuel tells the story of life after WWII.

The author’s father was a Luftwaffe officer during the war. As the Reich begins to collapse in 1945, ten-year-old Samuel, his mother, and his sister flee Germany, making a terrifying and pitiful home for themselves in refugee camps. Eventually the family returns to Strasbourg, where Samuel begins to come to grips with two evils: the Nazi regime that ruled during the war, and the Communist apparat he now has to contend with. Later on his family moves to America, and (as we learn in the epilogue) Samuel goes on to serve in the US Air Force for three decades. The descriptions of the horrors of war and its aftermath are a touch too predictable to hold the reader’s attention, but Samuel’s portrait of life in Germany (especially in the innocent days before the Reich crumbled) are lovely and evocative and manage to humanize German civilians under Hitler. Especially moving are Samuel’s descriptions of his grandparents, Oma and Opa Samuel. They were the one sure source of love in young Samuel’s life—his mother never had a kind word for him, and she often pummeled him with a rug beater or locked him in a broom closet for hours on end. Oma is a font of wise aphorisms, however, and Opa subtly teaches Samuel to resist the Reich (instructing him to greet people with “Guten Morgen” instead of “Heil Hitler”). “My grandparents’ house was full of mysteries,” Samuel writes, as he goes on to describe his exploits in the Green Room (so-called for its thick, verdant velvet) and his first taste of liquor at his Opa’s knee.

It is hard to imagine that Samuel, as a boy, struggled to translate “Hast Du genug fur Heute?” (“Do you have enough food for today?”) into English—for now his prose sings (or, at least, whistles and hums some lovely tunes).