The Big Lie
Page 26
Vibrant and heartbreaking first-hand accounts from women forced to hide their sexuality in Nazi Germany.
Into that Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder by Gitta Sereny (Pimlico, 1995)
Truly startling book in which the author attempts to understand how a charming family man came to be the commandant of Treblinka death camp by spending time with him in the prison where he is serving time for his war crimes.
Are You In This Hell Too?: Memoir of Troubled Times 1944–1945 by Elisabeth Sommer-Lefkovits (Menard Press, 1995)
A stark memoir by a woman who was deported to Ravensbrück and then Bergen-Belsen, and survived.
Online Resources
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – www.ushmm.org
A comprehensive resource on the Holocaust, but also a good place to go to for more on the treatment of homosexuals by the Nazis.
Calvin College – http://research.calvin.edu/
This website has a large archive of Nazi propaganda, including those weekly NSDAP posters referenced by Jessika in the book.
Lieder, Totalitarianism and the Bund Deutscher Mädel: Girls’s Political Coercion Through Song by Rachel Jane Anderson (McGill University, Canada, 2002)
http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/dtl_publish/8/29493.html
An online research paper examining the power of the songs in Wir Madel singen!, the Bund Deutscher Mädel’s official music book.
Films
We Are Legion
For an insight into hacking and organised online protest, this is a great documentary.
Organisations
www.arts-emergency.org
This action group works towards making arts and humanities careers accessible to all young people, and runs a national alternative old boy network that aims to create privilege for people without privilege.
Acknowledgements
Lots of people helped me write this book …
I spent a great deal of time at The Wiener Library and am incredibly grateful for their extensive archive of Nazi-era literature. I want to extend particular thanks to Kat Hübschmann for her expertise on the experiences of young women living under Hitler. I am indebted to all the historians whose non-fiction works provided sparks for this novel. If you would like to read more on the themes in The Big Lie, a list of some suggested titles follows.
In 2014, I was lucky to be at the Southbank Centre to hear Horst von Wächter and Niklas Frank, now in their seventies, talk about their high-ranking Nazi fathers. While Niklas denounces his father, Horst still believes that his father was somehow a good man. Their honest discussion of their paternal relationships helped me shape Jessika’s psyche and her connection with her father.
Thanks to all the coaches and skaters at Planet Ice Hemel Hempstead who helped me, probably without realising. If you want to learn any of Jessika’s basic moves, Robert Burgerman’s videos at ice-burg.co.uk are a great resource.
The German language in this book sounds colloquial and genuine because of guidance from Claire Brooks and native-speaker Kat Sellner. As well as pruning my dialogue, Kat was incredibly generous in sharing her experiences of being a young person in Germany now, growing up under the long shadow of World War II. Tausend Dank, Kat.
Lee Simpson taught me the difference between ‘the worldwide web’ and ‘the internet’, several times, with diagrams. Though it was never necessary to explicitly explain it in the book, it was important to me that Simon and Clementine Hart’s manipulation of communications hangs together in the background. The only reason that it does is because of Lee and his patient technical explanations of DDoS, VPN, etc.
Thank you firefighter Guy Pedliman for teaching me how to, well, fight a fire. And to my husband, for lending me his degree in history, political thought and philosophy. You can have it back now, Thom. I hope I haven’t scuffed the corners too much.
A raised ‘power-to-the-people’ fist to Hot Key Books, who are certainly publishing’s rebels. Thanks in particular to Emily Thomas for championing the book, Matilda Johnson for her passionate editing, Jenny Jacoby for her keen eye and to Jet Purdie for tirelessly tracking down our cover girl.
My agent Louise ‘Marvellously Nitty Gritty’ Lamont has stoked the fire in the belly of this story every step of the way, and has always had Jessika and Clementine’s backs.
Julie Mayhew
Julie Mayhew's debut novel, Red Ink, was nominated for the 2014 CILIP Carnegie Medal and short-listed for the 2014 Branford Boase Award.
She originally trained as a journalist, then as an actress, and started writing because she wanted there to be more brilliant roles for girls. Her plays have been performed in London and Edinburgh and on BBC Radio 4.
Julie is founder of www.berkowriters.co.uk and host of short story cabaret The Berko Speakeasy.
And she is also quite good at ice skating.
www.juliemayhew.co.uk
@juliemayhew
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First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hot Key Books
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
Text copyright © Julie Mayhew 2015
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4714-0475-7
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