My hero, Konrad, however, was not modelled on any living person. He is entirely my own invention. But Lukas does have a counterpart in historical reality. He is based on Salomon Perel. In 1941, Salomon was a Jewish teenager who, by some miracle, managed to pass himself off as an Aryan. He fought on the Eastern front in a German unit for a year, and then entered one of the elite schools for the Hitler Youth movement. Unlike Lukas, he survived.
A number of the characters—some are simply cited, others play a more important role in my story—are real historical figures:
MAX SOLLMANN, the director of the Lebensborn program.
GREGOR EBNER, the SS chief of medicine, who not only ran several Lebensborn maternity hospitals, but also supervised the selection and Germanisation of thousands of kidnapped children.
JOHANNA SANDER, director of the Kalish home.
The Braune Schwestern, the ‘BROWN SISTERS’, who orchestrated the kidnapping of children.
HERR TESCH, FRAU VIERMETZ, FRAU MÜLLER (NSV, National Socialist People’s Welfare), KARL BRANDT (Hitler’s personal doctor), his wife, ANNI REHBORN.
In 1947–1948, Sollmann, Ebner and their accomplices stood trial at Nuremberg, but the Allied military tribunal did not uphold the ‘criminal nature’ of the Lebensborn program. They were released after the trial.
I would particularly like to pay homage to the remarkable book by Marc Hillel, Au nom de la race (Of Pure Blood), which provided me with indispensable material for the writing of my novel. Marc Hillel’s book is, I believe, the only one to gather together all the information about the Lebensborn program.
A Woman in Berlin, a memoir, was also a huge source of inspiration when I was writing about the experiences of my two heroes in the ruins of Berlin at the end of the war.
The following books also provided extremely valuable source material:
Napola, Les Écoles d’Élite du Troisième Reich, Herma Bouvier, Claude Geraud, L’Harmattan, 2009.
Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Antony Beevor, Viking Press, 2002.
Les Fiancées du Führer, Will Berthold, Presses de la Cité, 1961.
Europa, Europa, Sally Perel, Ramsay, 1990.
Children of Vienna, Robert Neumann, V. Gollanz, 1946.
The Erl-King, Michel Tournier, Collins, 1972.
I should also list the many internet sites I consulted, but I was unfortunately unable to make a record of them all.
Thank you to Zosia Orlicka for her translations from the Polish.
Lastly, a very warm thank you to Thierry Lefèvre. Several years ago, he suggested I write this novel and he has guided my work with his constant encouragement.
NOTES
Chapter 1
* Children, Cooking, Church
Chapter 4
* The League of German Girls, the girls’ wing of the Hitler Youth.
Chapter 23
* Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, translated by Ralph Mannheim, Houghton Mifflin, Mariner Books, New York, 1999, pp. 304-5.
** ibid., p.150.
Chapter 25
* The name used by the Germans for Russian soldiers.
Chapter 26
* The name given to the people’s militia launched in Germany in 1944 and composed mainly of very young, or very old, soldiers.
Sarah Cohen-Scali, Max
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