David Cesarani
The Drowned & the Saved
The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews
By Bernard Wasserstein
Harvard University Press 334pp £20 order from our bookshop
Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmark’s Jews Escaped the Nazis
By Bo Lidegaard (Translated by Robert Maass)
Atlantic Books 396pp £22 order from our bookshop
In the life of Gertrude van Tijn, Bernard Wasserstein has found the perfect subject for examining the appalling options that faced Jewish leaders under Nazi rule. Van Tijn was born into a bourgeois German Jewish family in 1891. The early loss of her mother and financial ruin turned her into a strong, independent woman. She married a Jewish mining engineer and travelled widely before settling in the Netherlands. She was drawn to feminism, social work and Zionism at a time when they were unfashionable causes. In 1933 she took on relief work for German Jews escaping persecution in the Third Reich.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency