Pam Jenoff, The Kommandant's Girl

The Kommandant's Girl

Pam Jenoff

Mira, Mar 2007, $13.95

ISBN: 0778323420

In Warsaw, scholar Jacob and Emma Bau have been married three weeks when the blitzkrieg devastates Poland. The Nazi tanks quickly take over the Polish capital forcing Jacob into hiding amidst the underground resistance while leaving his nineteen-year-old spouse to survive in the rotting Jewish ghetto along with her parents. However, she is snuck out of the city and taken to the home of Jacob's Christian relatives in Krakow as the non-Jewish Anna Lipowski.

Kommandant Richwalder meets Anna and demands she work for him as his personal assistant because he insists the former librarian can speak Polish and German fluently; more important to him he is attracted to her. Though reticent, she reluctantly accepts reality that she has no choice; she accepts the job. The Polish Resistance is euphoric as they plan to use Anna to obtain occupation information while the Kommandant wants to court her.

This is a deep look at WWII from the unique perspective of a young female Jew hiding as a Christian in Occupied Poland. Anna is a super lead protagonist whose struggles with her fear of being caught as a Jew or as a spy frightens her almost to the point of inactivity, but courageously tries to do the right thing for her people: the Poles. Her attraction to the Kommandant adds to her confusion. Readers who want a refreshing slant on the impact on individuals in occupied countries will want to follow the exploits of Anna as she struggles with loyalties involving religion and national origin as much as her personal desires knowing that a reckoning that could lead to the deaths of her loved ones seems imminent.

Harriet Klausner