The Hollow Bones
Penguin Random House Australia
By Leah Kaminsky
$32.99
Berlin, 1936. Ernst Schäfer, a young, ambitious zoologist and keen hunter and collector, has come to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who invites him to lead a group of SS scientists to the frozen mountains of Tibet. Their secret mission: to search for the origins of the Aryan race. Ernst has doubts initially, but soon seizes the opportunity to rise through the ranks of the Third Reich.
While Ernst prepares for the trip, he marries Herta, his childhood sweetheart. But Herta, a flautist who refuses to play from the songbook of womanhood and marriage under the Reich, grows increasingly suspicious of Ernst and his expedition. When Ernst and his colleagues finally leave Germany in 1938, they realise the world has its eyes fixed on the horror they have left behind in their homeland. A lyrical and poignant cautionary tale, The Hollow Bones brings to life one of the Nazi regime’s little-known villains through the eyes of the animals he destroyed and the wife he undermined in the name of science and cold ambition.
If I Survive: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 100-year-old Lena Goldstein’s Miracle Story
Barbara Miller
By Barbara Miller
$24.99
Lena Goldstein kept saying to herself “If I Survive” because death stared her in the face every day in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. She saw her family killed by the Nazis around her, one by one and kept thinking “It’s my turn next.” Her parents were taken to Treblinka Death Camp. By a series of miracles, she not only survived but turned 100 years old on 31 January 2019 in Sydney and is one of the last surviving witnesses of the Holocaust. Lena’s compelling account of her life, which author Barbara Miller tells based on interviews with Lena and her diary, makes for riveting reading.
If I Survive is available at the Sydney Jewish Museum, via Amazon or via: www.barbara-miller-books.com
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