The German Girl

Author/Guide: Armando Lucas Correa

Why a Booktrail?

1930s, 2000s: The heartbreaking story of the St Louis trying to take Jews to safety during the war

ISBN: 978-1471161629
Translator: Nick Caistor
Genre: Historical, magical realism

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What you need to know before your trail

The streets of Berlin are draped in swastikas and Hannah’s life is just one which has changed for ever. She is no longer welcome in the places she once considered home.
Then she gets a chance to leave on the St Louis, a transatlantic liner that promises Jews safe passage to Cuba. The Rosenthals sell everything they have to fund visas and tickets. At first the liner feels like luxury, but as they travel the circumstances of war change, and it soon becomes their prison.
Seven decades later in New York, on her twelfth birthday Anna Rosen receives a package from Hannah, the great-aunt she never met but who raised her deceased father. Anna and her mother immediately travel to Cuba to meet this elderly relative, and for the first time Hannah tells them the untold story of her voyage on the St Louis.

Locations

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Cuba
I: Havana

Travel Guide

Berlin

When the city you known for years and have loved for years, it must be surreal as well as heartbreaking to see it change and be destroyed before your eyes.

When tram passengers see the smoke rising from the buildings for example

Leo pointed to a beautiful building that was in flames on Fasanenstrasse, near the S-Bahn level crossing. Smoke was still rising from the main roof of the shattered dome. Nobody else looked at the devastated building They must have felt guilt. they had no wish to see what the city was becoming.”

The city becomes a nightmare for them and is no longer the city safe for Jews..

This is the city where most of the action takes place and the setting is bleak and hopeless and so very very sad. Soldiers patrol the streets where people used to wander freely. The Ogres slowly gain control of the city and through the eyes of a child especially this is heartbreaking and raw. There are days they wake up and can’t breathe. the city is slowing choking them and their futures and people are dying inside.

Hamburg

The city where the St Louis sailed from. There are several museums near the docks to see the kind of life and conditions were on board ships travelling back then

New York

The city is described in the tragic times of the 9/11 tragedy. It’s where anna and hannah’s story combine. The description of when the planes hit and the consequences of a people under fear as their city is attacked shows how fear is the same all over the world, its consequences are heartbreaking and loss is universal.

Cuba

Written as Khuba. She learns that the father’s family had to leave Cuba as when you live on an island she’s told, you have to leave. “The Endless sea is your only frontier”

The St. Louis set sail from Hamburg to Cuba on May 13, 1939. It had some 937 passengers, most of them Jewish refugees. Not all of them were allowed to disembark once they got to Havana. There were problems with visas and new rules which had been implemented whilst they’d been at sea. Some on the boat were sent to other countries, which were later invaded by Germany and so many ended up victims of the Holocaust.

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

Reading about the Holocaust is never easy but to read about a situation which seemed to offer hope but instead resulted in even more heartbreak is very hard indeed. I’m talking about the real life story of the St Louis which took over 900 Jewish refugees from war torn Germany to cuba only to ben turned back. Some got on the island but most were taken to England and other countries where ultimately Germany invaded and they were taken to concentration camps.

Told through the eyes of the characters in this book – two women decades apart really allows you to see what it would have been like to have walked in their shoes. The tragedy of 9/11 shows how little we have learned about the brutality of some human beings and the violence which seems to know no end. The subject might be hard to swallow at various points but the fresh writing and excellent translation make this a novel you have to read.

I felt very sad at the end, sadder still that this was based on a true story. Sad that the persecution and violence of the war is still happening in the world and there are lots more Annas, Hannahs and Leos whose stories we might never know.