SABINE'S ODYSSEY

In this biography/memoir, a woman relates her mother’s experiences as a Jewish child under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands and her mission as an adult to uncover her brother’s fate.

Sabine Frohlich was born in 1927 in Breslau, Germany, the daughter of Georg, a successful lawyer, and Edith, a beautiful and elegant socialite. While the 1930s were a terrifying time in Germany for Jews—Sabine’s family members were Roman Catholic converts but of Jewish ancestry—the girl was shielded by her parents from the time’s political tumult, and she largely enjoyed a happy, normal childhood. But that blissful oblivion finally came to an end—Sabine came to understand that she was different when her older brother, Andreas, was rejected from joining the Hitler Youth. She was later expelled when she was only 11 years old from her Catholic school for being a Jew. In 1939, in the wake of Kristallnacht, Georg, who was convinced the nation’s enthusiasm for Hitler was a “temporary aberration,” finally came to grips with the untenability of his family’s situation. He devised a plan to move everyone to the United States, a harrowing predicament powerfully conveyed by Schipper, Sabine’s daughter. The children would eventually go into hiding in the Netherlands, but Andreas was arrested and shipped to Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria notorious for its “gruesome history, atrocious conditions and barbaric treatment of prisoners.” Sabine and her parents survived World War II but not Andreas, who died at the camp. The author tells a familiar but nonetheless gripping story of a family torn apart by German aggression and provides a rigorous and affecting account of the “countless cruelties of the Nazis.” As an adult, Sabine became obsessively devoted to finding out the full details of Andreas’ death. Schipper accompanied her to Mauthausen in 1998 in search of answers, a forlorn yet courageous mission communicated with understandable anger and melancholy as well as great lucidity. This memoir is not an easy read—it is unflinchingly frank and sometimes despairing—but it is a rewarding one and a beautiful tribute to survival and remembrance.

An extraordinary account of a Jewish family’s tribulations during and after Hitler’s reign.