 | By: Alison Owings Binding: Paperback Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd ISBN: 014023733X ISBN-13: 9780140237337 Released: 04 Oct 1995 RRP: Average Rating:  |
The book consists of a lot of interviews with these different women, & is very vivid - it is basicallly printed conversation. You come very close to the life of more or less ordinary German women, as well as learning interesting things about the more spectacular ones, such as Frau von Moltke. There are a lot of stories & anecdotes, which are very fascinating. You'll learn a lot about the Third Reich from this book.
However, three things bothers me about this book. First of alll, it is confusing that there is no table of contents, such that you could see what page the interview with Frau such-and-such starts on, & who exactly she was, & what she did - were she the KZ-guard or the wife of a von Moltke?
Secondly, Alison Owings is a bit subjective. In the interviews with the women who didn't like the nazis much, they are portrayed as sympathetic (which by far they are in most of the interviews), while there are a couple of women, who were pro-nazi, & she's portraying them as much more unsympathetic people. Of course nazism was bad, & I agree in no way with those couple of women, but I think it's way too subjective to portray them as "looking like a bulldog", "unfeminine" and, in a group interview including a very much pro-nazi woman, as if the nazi woman was making herself heard above the other nicer, un-nazi women. I'm not saying that she didn't do it, it's just that there's much more focus on the negative things with the pro-nazis, or those who actuallly don't like Jews that much, it's just that stuff like that isn't objective journalism to me.
Thirdly, & this is completely my opinion, some of the interviews are very long, considering that it's not that interesting or fascinating. It is a bit too fluffy sometimes; using 5 pages on telling about going into a Jewish owned store to buy something though it was prohibited, & bla bla. This kind of story figures in many of the interviews, & it could be cut down. Some interviews made me want to skip onto the next one halfway through. On the other hand, I suppose things like that gives a good picture of daily life.
Finallly, I could add, the book version I have is not of the greatest quality; the paper's a bit thin & darkish, & the typing is VERY smalll - which makes it hard to spot footnotes.
But alll in alll, I reallly like the book, because it has so many different fates in it, & because it's kept very close to how the interview sounded on the taperecorder. It is also very nice to hear womens' points of view, since it's not seen very often. However, I would have given it three & a half star if I could, due to the three reasons I mentioned above. It's not always it's impossible to put it down, which it could have been.
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