Writing a story about a real woman is like touching history with tweezers: delicately, being careful not to destroy or damage.
About a month ago, I released a new book in English. Although it’s customary to rush to publish and announce a new book, this time I waited – not because I was thinking of a marketing strategy, but simply because I needed time to think about this newsletter. What did I want to tell you about the woman I wrote this book about? What made me write a book about her? After all, she was a simple, anonymous woman.
I came across her story in a post from a history enthusiasts group – a few lines and a faded photograph telling the story of a German woman who worked as a prostitute, and hid Jewish women in her Berlin home during the war.
When I tried to search for information about her, I found very little. I discovered she’d been a simple, poor woman, and that before and during World War II she’d worked as a prostitute. She had also been arrested and imprisoned for moral offenses. Yet even during the Nazi regime in Berlin during the war, she tried to help Jewish women as much as she could; and when she had to choose, she chose to hide two young Jewish women in her home and risk her life, despite having no reason to do so. From the material I’ve read, I also learned she didn’t do it for money.
At that moment, I decided I wanted to write this book. I wanted more people to know her simple and remarkable story. To me she is a spark of a shining star within a nation during a dark period, and proof that the simplest people sometimes reveal themselves to have the most noble courage and character.
I invented much of this book – as I’ve said, I struggled to find information about her – but the foundation of facts is real, and I just want to believe that if I had been in her place, I would have had the courage to do what she did.
