During these unusual times we have been working hard to stay in
touch with the members of our shared reading groups to find out what they've
been reading. Some have put down their thoughts as reviews that we'd like
to share. Here's Mary from the Pontypool book group with her opinion of
'The Aftermath' by Rhidian Brook.
Yn ystod y cyfnod anarferol yma rydym wedi
bod yn gweithio’n galed i aros mewn cysylltiad ag aelodau o’n grwpiau darllen i
ganfod beth maen nhw wedi bod yn ei ddarllen. Mae rhai wedi rhannu’u barn
ar ffurf adolygiadau ac fe hoffem rannu’r rhain. Dyma Mary o grŵp llyfrau
Pont-y-pŵl gyda’i barn am 'The Aftermath' gan Rhidian Brook.
So
I am going to write on ‘Aftermath’ which greatly impressed me; not a difficult
read and it told me things that happened in my lifetime and an underlying
current of reconciliation that worked in the end and took away much rightful
condemnation. The feeling of ‘the only good German is a dead one’
prevailed among some people who had lost family and friends for a long time.
The war didn’t really end in 1945 with rationing going on into hr fifties
and of course the rebuilding and also registered permanent loss of historical
buildings and areas forever on both sides. This novel pitches the German
point of view with defeat in 1945 of the Nazi promise of ‘a Reich of a thousand
years’ and the elimination of all Judaism and opposition. This was made
plain when the concentration camps were opened up. What Jew could forgive
that?
The
hero of the novel, an English colonel, thinks in a different way. He had
worked himself up through the ranks so had a certain amount of power and saw
the possibility of a way forward through Reconciliation. The German
nation was utterly defeated and he uses his characters to portray the hardships
of a devastated race in the determination of children with nothing and nobody
to survive with a little gang, some very young carrying others. A leader
even there emerges and they live by begging and stealing. This is the
English zone after partition of the city and capital of Berlin. It
couldn’t have happened in the vengeful Russian zone. When he invites a
rich German non-Nazi to share the requisitioned rich man’s mansion he did a
huge thing in opposition to many of his own soldiers and certainly that of some
Americans who are out to rob for their own future. Even the top men have
to be carried along with the idea, and he takes the risk because he cannot bear
to see the children, any children, starve to death among the devastation that
was 4-zoned Berlin. This despite his own loss of a son, the elder of two,
killed by a casual German bomb. Even his wife is against him and the rich
German Nazi-brainwashed teenage daughter who lives there too and whose mother
had died in an Allied raid.
We
see his humanity when he gives his chocolate ration to the starving beggared
children in the homeless streets. The author got much information from
male relatives of his who survived the war and the whole epoch of the unknown
to the Allies concentration camps. I remember exactly a story by an uncle
of mine, young then of course, who related doing that himself in Berlin after
much fighting in the desert against the respected German commander
Rommel. Being taken prisoner too and witnessing the slaughter of the
British at Monte Casino. He was called up in the very early stages of the
war, went through it all and then saw only the British coast before becoming
part of the Occupation troops for as long as the army could keep him until
demob. He was a charming man but hot-tempered and didn’t suffer fools gladly
even at a loss to himself and he practically ordered the Tommies to give up
their chocolate rations. Even their beloved cigarettes which the children
could sell to farmers for food. And they did give!
Throughout,
this is a novel showing the best in mankind in the face of disaster. A
city of no hope which had suffered retaliatory bombs for Coventry on a mighty
scale. Like the second bomb in Japan it wasn’t all necessary for the
innocent suffered for the wicked with their enormous cruelty. It was a novel
which made one think of dilemmas and questions hard to answer. A war that
had to be fought against insanity and utmost cruelty and greed and how to mend
it all afterwards. At least the hero showed a way.
