Risking Exposure
Page 15
Uta Dreher and my parents Judith and the late Norbert Grunau for their input about the life and character of the German people;
Jennifer Beemer, for your help with practical matters so I could focus on writing and research;
My sister-in-law Kathleen Moran, for hosting me during the research at the LOC;
Mike Moran, for your encouragement to continue this project and finish what I started. I’m glad you’re my son;
Joni Bradley, for listening to endless iterations of plots and characters, reading multiple versions, and reminding me to listen to my heart. You’re the best friend a girl could have;
Katie Barnett, my daughter, who accompanied me on the research trip to Munich. I cannot thank you enough for your generous gift of love, time, and support – and for still speaking to me after I got us lost in Munich;
Michael Moran, my husband and partner for life’s journey, for picking up the slack while I worked evenings, weekends, and vacations on this book. You knew when to offer help and when to leave me undisturbed to pursue my dream. All my love.
If I’ve omitted someone, the responsibility is mine alone.
Discussion Questions
The book is a work of fiction, but as in all researched historical fiction, ‘it might have been.’ These questions may trigger classroom or book group discussion about life for a young teen in Nazi Germany.
In the beginning of the novel, Sophie is happy to belong to a group of ‘insiders.’ She is reluctant to act in a way that might single her out, even when she doesn’t like what the others do. When have you noticed people behaving that way? In what situations have you ‘gone along with it’ yourself?
Sophie’s photos are used as propaganda, defined by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as “biased information designed to shape public opinion and behavior.” Think about the way today’s media promotes certain ideas. How does this promotion influence your thinking? What ideas have you accepted because most people believe them to be true?
Think about the courage Sophie showed at the end of the novel. Why did she act courageously then and not before? If you faced the threat of harm for standing up or speaking out, what would you do? What if speaking out might threaten the safety of a loved one?
Some people around Sophie held true to their moral code while others went along with what we now call ‘group-think.’ Think about your own morals. What might cause you to reexamine your values of right and wrong? What factors might cause your sense of right and wrong to change?
Selected Bibliography
Some of the nonfiction resources used in creating this novel’s historical backdrop are categorized and listed below. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it represents the variety of sources consulted.
Dozens of works of well-researched Nazi-era fiction I read and enjoyed are not included here. I encourage you to explore the world of historical fiction as well!
Disabilities, polio, and 1930s rehabilitation
Bock, Gisela. Sterilization and Medical Massacres in National Socialist Germany: Ethics, Politics, and the Law. In Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany. Edited by Manfred Berg and Geoffrey Cocks, Cambridge University Press, England, 1997.
Evans, Suzanne E. Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People with Disabilities. Ivan R. Dee Publisher, Chicago, 2004.
Friedlander, Henry. The Exclusion and Murder of the Disabled, in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, edited by Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2001.
Kehret, Peg. Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio. Albert Whitman, Morton Grove, Illinois, 1996.
Osten, Philipp. Photographing Disabled Children in Imperial and Weimar Germany. In: Cultural and Social History, Volume 7, Issue 4, pp. 511-532, 2010.
Poore, Carol. Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Michigan, 2007.
Rathbone, Josephine. Corrective Physical Education, 3rd edition. WB Saunders, Philadelphia, 1944.
Shands, Alfred Rives Jr. Handbook of Orthopedic Surgery. CV Mosby, St. Louis, 1940.
Wilson, Daniel J. Living with Polio: The Epidemic and its Survivors. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Hitler Youth
Axelrod, Toby. Rescuers Defying the Nazis. Non-Jewish Teens who Rescued Jews. Saddleback Publishing, Irvine, California, 1999.
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow. Scholastic, New York, 2005.
Heck, Alfons. A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika. Renaissance House, Phoenix. 1985.
Kater, Michael. Hitler Youth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2004.
Koch, HW. The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development, 1922-1945. Cooper Square Press, New York, 2000.
von Halasz, Joachim, series editor. Hitler Youth: An Introduction for American and British Readers. First published in 1936 as German youth in a changing world. World Propaganda Classics, Foxley Books, London. 2008.
Munich and its Nazi-era history
Benz, Wolfgang. A Concise History of the Third Reich. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2006.
Bruhns, Wibke. My Father’s Country. The Story of a German Family. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2008.
Dodd, Christopher J. Letters from Nuremberg. My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice. Crown Publishing, New York, 2007.
Epstein, Helen. Children of the Holocaust. Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors. GP Putnam Books, New York, 1979.
Faber, David. Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2008.
Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1995.
Friedman, Ina R. The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1990.
Johnson, Eric A and Karl-Heinz Reuband. What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany. Basic Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005.
Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941. A Diary of the Nazi Years. The Modern Library, New York, 1999.
Large, David Clay. Where Ghosts Walked. Munich’s Road to the Third Reich. WW Norton and Company, New York, 1997.
Mahlendorf, Ursula. The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2009.
Owings, Alison. Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1995.
Shirer, William L. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent. Popular Library, New York, 1961.
Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959.
Voices of the Holocaust. Perfection Learning Corporation, Logan Iowa, 2000.
von Halasz, Joachim, series editor. Hitler’s Day of German Art, 1938: The Programme of the Procession. World Propaganda Classics, Foxley Books, London. First published in 1938, published in England in 2009.
von Halasz, Joachim. Hitler’s Munich. Foxley Books, London, 2007.
Wick, Steve. The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2011.
Videos
A Walk through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers: WWII, The Propaganda Battle. PBS, 1984.
Heil Hitler: Confessions of a Hitler Youth. HBO, 1991.
Ruins of the Reich. Shannon and Company productions, 2007.
Sophie Scholl- The Final Days. Zeitgeist Films, 2005.
The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler in Nazi Germany. Docuramafilms, 1992.
Pamphlets
Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People with Disabilities. Disability Rights Advocates, Oakland, California.
The Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Victims of the Nazi Era: Handicapped. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Websites
Axis History Factbook. http://www.axishistory.com
German History in Documents and Images: Nazi Germany. German Historical Institute, Washington DC. http://www.ghi-dc.org/
Germany, Politics and Government, 1933-1945. Library of Congress archives of prints and photographs online. http://www.loc.gov
How Polio Changed Us . National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/howpolio/
Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/culture/museums/Documentation_Centre/188431/index.html
Nazi and East German Propaganda. Calvin College. http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/
Nazi Germany: 1933-1939. http://www.historyplace.com/
Rogow, Sally. Hitler’s Unwanted Children. Holocaust Teacher Resource Center of the Holocaust Education Foundation. http://www.holocaust-trc.org/
The Third Reich in Ruins: Munich. Captioned pre-war and post-war photos in and around Munich. http://www.thirdreichruins.com/munich.htm
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. http://www.ushmm.org/
For information about the author, her books, social media links, and more, please check her website http://jeannemoran.weebly.com
Contact the author at authorjeannemoran@gmail.com
If you have enjoyed this book, please leave feedback on Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you!