The Oppermanns

Holy cow. Trite to say, I know, but everyone should read this. For a while it was a pretty typical family saga, which I like, but there's an undercurrent of unease. And then it hits. I don't even really know how to talk about this.

Feuchtwanger wrote this in ‘33 and yet it feels like it must have been written later. When people say no one knew what was going on this book shows the lie of that. A few chapters in the last section are a bit of an info dump, but they don't read that way, showing Feuchtwanger's skill. They're hard to read, but they show what people knew. Other parts show how easy it was for people to dismiss what was happening.

Between this and Manja by Anna Gmeyner (published in ‘39) there really can't be any believing that people didn't know what was happening. Like today, it's easy for those not affected to ignore what's going on. But people know. We should all know better. We can't let these things keep happening.