Cruelty od war

The Polish nurse informs that the purpose of the experiment is to check how long a child can survive without food.

When a small Tadeusz is born, the mother's breasts are heavily bandaged, and any attempt to release them is impossible.

A small child weeps for days and nights due to lack of food, until it finally becomes weaker. Cornelia can’t look at her child's slow and cruel death and asks for help a Polish nurse. The woman brings her an injection of morphine that will lead to the death of the child. Cornelia long wonders whether to kill her own child, in the end she decides to shorten the suffering of her son, whose death was inevitable. After the death of her son, she returns to the camp, and there is no sympathy from the prisoners.

In the later chapters of the book, the mechanism that arose in the head of Cornelia as a result of this tragedy is described with details. This tragedy that leaves its mark on her psyche for the rest of her life, and also affects the life of her child born after the war and granddaughter.

There is a note in the book that says it is an authentic war story, and the author decided to use it in her book. A dry historical fact doesn’t affect us with such strength, but if it is told as the story of one of the heroes, the book becomes more authentic for us and at the same time the identification of such a story with a specific hero makes us feel the seriousness of such a historical fact.

Dark side of history

The thread I wanted to say was the time of war. Especially the tragedy of Jews, which was presented on the example of the story of grandma Marta Landowska- Cornelia. And that's what I'm going to focus on.

The book describes the authentic case of a Jewish woman who went to Auschwitz during pregnancy. In the book, it was Marta Landwoska's grandmother. The story is about life in the camp hospital and conditions prevailing there. It is a story full of cruelty because it talks about how camp doctors treated prisoners.

During the division of works, Cornelia admits that she is pregnant and that she can’t do heavy work. The woman goes to the hospital, where she hopes to improve the living conditions, because as you know, those in the camp were inhumane. She is wrong, at the beginning of her arrival, she gets a new and clean bed, but she does not get anything to eat.

She is lucky because a Polish woman who works in the hospital, sometimes brings her something to eat. But what is the purpose of the doctors? 

About it I will say you in the next post.

My own review

Unfortunately, this book received more criticism than first book. Personally, I think that this part perfectly complements the previous one,  but in fact, reading was no longer so fascinating. Generally, I’m satisfied with the purchase and I will definitely come back to it, because it is an inseparable part of the history of the von Beck family. But at the same time, I agree with the opinion that at some moments the action seemed forced, and the language was, in short, too colloquial for a book dealing with such subjects. However, there was a group of Joanna Jax fans who defended the author in their reviews. In principle, we can say that "Piętno" has more fans than critics. 

I will quote one sentence here, which is very memorable and perfectly refers to the action taking place in the book. "The truth is sometimes surprising and different than we would like to hear, sometimes it's better not to know certain things". 

In the next post I will touch the subject, which is very clearly presented in this book. It wasn’t a main theme, but it was really "strong" that it was impossible not to mention it.

"Piętno"

Today I will present you the second and last pat of this amazing story. As you can guess, this is a  sequel book of  "Dziedzictwo von Beckow". The book is called "Piętno".

As in the previous post, I will get the knowledge from a popular website that presents reviews of well-known books.

Julia Kunis, great-granddaughter of Werner von Beck, decides to trace the history of the von Beck's family. During her wanderings, she meets the historian Marta Landowska, the heir of Jewish jewelers - Dawid Halpern and the cynical seeker of the precious relics of the Third Reich - Tom Anders. By discovering the story of her family and people associated with her, Julia enters a dangerous path that can end tragically for her. Hurted by the last partner, she doesn’t want to enter into new relationships, but the voice of her heart doesn’t let her forget about the strength of her feelings. During the sentimental journey to the land of ancestors, on her way there are love and passion, which once again win with common sense. However, the growing obstacles and fear of another relationship seem insurmountable ...

Positive review

Today I will present one of the reviews I found on the internet. As I promised in the previous post, this time it will be a positive picture of the book. What's more, this opinion presents a more detailed description of the action, but at the same time does not reveal its ending.  Of course, the review was translated by me from the Polish language.

“ I must say with all conviction - congratulations for our young compatriot for creating such an interesting family saga. This is a moral novel with a background story, beginning in 1934 and ending in modern times. We recognize Maria and Werner, who share everything, nationality, class affiliation, wealth, origin, but combines something that can’t be bought or inherited – love. She was unselfish, boundless, full of passion, unconditional devotion and tenderness. This feeling required sacrifices, breaking rules, lies, difficult choices and hesitations between love and hatred. It wasn’t easy considering historical events and family connections. The family of von Beck is aristocracy, the type of family whose interior was filled with hypocrisy and lies, and impeccably perfect outside. All deviations from morality were concealed and quickly cut off.
War has always made life complicated. What was simple and obvious in a peaceful world, during the war became impossible. It would seem that the end of the war will close the chapter in history, but the memories of that period touched later life, destroying their dream life. After the German occupation, the Soviets started not much different from the first: fanaticism, lust for power, hypocrisy, cruelty, fear, accusation and destruction of innocent people. 

Very expressive, complex and diverse psychological portraits of heroes, location of action in many cities in Europe, dramaturgy of events, dilemmas and choices of heroes make the book even more interesting. The life of all heroes has changed dramatically. How important in life is the family, which we can underestimate on a daily basis, until the moment, event and tragedy come to us and realize its value. The family that should always be a support can save or ruin life. The great injustice is the responsibility of future generations for sins and the fault of the ancestors. Some chapters ended with a sentence about the future of the characters, to get to know her, you had to delve into the next chapter, which I did with pleasure." 

I’d like to add that I agree with the presented opinion and for sure this book will stay in my head for a long time, but also in my heart.

I sincerely apologize for any mistakes in the translation, but I hope that my level of English is enough to understand the meaning of the content that I’m presenting.

Difficult to read

As the short description in the previous post tells, history is shrouded in a great mystery. This is certainly a book that will interest mainly all fans of the war period, because the story of love of the characters takes place at that time.

Below I will present all the disadvantages of the book that were important to me. This is not the author's criticism, but my personal feeling, which may be shared by more readers.

1.       The plot is very complex, it should be very focused to follow all the heroes introduced by the author. A moment of deconcentration caused that I had to go back a few pages and read them again because I didn’t understand what was going on.

2.        Also the first chapter of the book was totally meaningless for me, torn out of context, only after reading the whole saga I returned to it anew, because it didn’t give me peace of mind that for some purpose this chapter was placed.

These are the only remarks that haven’t escaped my attention. In the next posts I will try to focus on the positive aspects of the saga that I present.

"Dziedzictwo von Becków"

The book I mentioned last time  is a novel written by Joanna Jax,  titled “Dziedzictwo von Becków.” The name of Saga is “Saga von Becków”. Second part of this saga is titled “Piętno”. Unfortunately, these books havn’t been translated into English, that's why I leave their original names.

Let me translate the short description of the book from the well-known Polish page, describing books.

http://lubimyczytac.pl/ksiazka/224022/dziedzictwo-von-beckow

(I’ve changed some words and phrases).

A story of two people who thanks to fate met each other just before the war. The book is about the intricate lives of a Polish teacher and a German SS officer and their descendants. The story takes place over almost eighty years, transferring the reader from the pre-war Free City of Gdańsk and the Prussian aristocratic estate in Schleswig-Holstein to  Krakow and Olkusz, post-war East Berlin and Warsaw, then to the Provencal village and Paris of the sixties, and finally to Poland after 1989. Coloring the characters and skillfully dosing the secrets, the author created a touching story about forgiveness, love, difficult choices and moral dilemmas, hatred, greed for revenge, greed and complicated family relationships.

About holidays

Holidays are to do things for which we don't have time during the academic year.

In this holiday I decided to work abroad in Switzerland. As you probably guessed, I worked a lot, but there was time for pleasure. Outside of work, I could only focus on myself.

Because my suitcase was not too big, I decided to take only two books. It was these books that made me sleep for two weeks in the morning, and at work I was always tired.

I never thought that the Polish author could make such an impression on me. I'm not saying that Poland doesn't have good literature but I think nothing has interested me like this saga before. I « swallowed » this books in few nights ! After that, at work, I was all the time deconcentrated because of this book. The action was so interesting  that for a few days after reading,  I still felt like I her hero, as if it was my life, and what's more, I couldn’t stop thinking about the end of this story!

What book am  I  talking about? I will present you this wonderful story in the next post.