DANGEROUS SPRING

In yet another facet of the emerging Germany, Margot Benary-Isbert has failed to paint a convincing picture of the Lorenz family, waiting in anxious anticipation for the conquerors, as victorious American troops approach. Buchenwald was just outside their village, but it is only when Karin is serving as translator that she hears the shocking details- and rejects her Nazi training. Her brother Till, educated in the Hitler Youth, awakens when his friend, Armin, an SS trooper assigned to Buchenwald, wants to escape- and is shot by his ""comrades"". Despite the fact that Dr. Lorenz, for purposes of safety, had sent his family to live with a German pastor opposed to Nazism, the Lorenz' family and the townspeople are painted as good Germans, though Nazi conditioned, oblivious to the horrors perpetrated, but waiting for their American saviours. A thoughtful reader will wonder whether this is something of a whitewash job, with glaring inconsistencies.