REVIEW: "The Warsaw Orphan" by Kelly Rimmer
In the past couple of months, I have passively reflected on the things we take for granted.
Honestly, I have never really had… hardship… in my life. Sure, there were things that weren’t ideal.
People on the periphery of my life who weren’t nice.
Experiences I would have liked to have but didn’t.
Things I would have enjoyed owning but couldn’t afford.
But I have never really wanted.
I have absolutely been privileged. And a journey I have been on in this past year – one on which many of my peers have joined me – is recognizing and acknowledging this privilege.
When I learned about the Holocaust in school, I was duly upset by the stories contained in the history textbook — even though these accounts of this genocide were largely sanitized, made easier to digest for a younger audience and easier to explain for a nervous teacher.
It wasn’t until much later, when I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a teenager, that I really realized just how incredibly horrible this atrocity was.
Until then, I had allowed myself to believe a watered-down version of history. I had believed a version that textbook publishers and history teachers knew wasn’t the full, unvarnished truth, but I suppose assumed would suffice.
We cannot traumatize the students, they probably thought as they edited out the most horrifying details of the Nazi reign of terror. But maybe being traumatized is what we really needed.
Because I was traumatized when, standing amongst the crowd in that museum, I looked down on that pit of abandoned shoes, each once belonging to a child who was murdered by the Nazis.
And my trauma continued as I walked through the museum, floor by circular floor. Only one way in. Only one way out. Designed to make it impossible for you to shield yourself from the full reality of the situation.
At the time I was moved. I thought how awful it was that people of the past were able to do these things to other people. Perhaps for my own sanity, I divorced myself from the events entirely. The people who did these things were in the past. Dead and gone and buried.
Now, I am less moved and more infuriated. Because I now realize that these events, these prejudices, aren’t a relic of our past.
Just a few weeks ago, I watched on TV as an angry mob forced its way into the US Capitol building. Way too many of these rioters expressed not their dissatisfaction with governmental procedure, but instead their prejudice.
They marched through the halls of the Capitol waving their Confederate flags while unapologetically wearing shirts emblazoned with symbols and words reflecting their hatred. A “Camp Auschwitz” shirt. A shirt reading 6MWE – which I later came to learn meant “six million wasn’t enough,” in reference to the horrifying number of people who lost their lives at the bloodied hands of the Nazi regime.
Now more than ever, I truly understand the importance of presenting a realistically abrasive recounting of what occurred during this horrible era of hate. We, all of us, need to confront what happened. Because it’s only by confronting it that we can truly understand the depths of evil to which people sunk in the past and truly realize the potential impact of not striking back against prejudices of all kinds today.
This recent reflection on hatred in our society and my role in that system makes this the perfect time to read The Warsaw Orphan, Kelly Rimmer’s newest historical fiction novel which plunges readers into the icy cold waters of the Holocaust and keeps them there, submerged and gasping for breath, until the very last page.
As this novel opens, we meet two teenagers: Roman and Emilia. Both live in Warsaw and both are trying to navigate a society made horrifically complex and dangerous by the now-in-power Nazis.
The son of a catholic father and a Jewish mother, Roman was raised in the church, even after his father’s death. But, when the Nazi’s invaded, continuing to assert his Catholicism would have meant being separated from his family. So he joined them in the Jewish ghetto.
They live in inhumane conditions, surviving on vegetable peels and living in impossibly cramped quarters.
But they are surviving.
Until the Nazi’s decide to start deporting Jews from the ghetto. Though the residents of the ghetto are told that they are being relocated to work camps, they soon discover that the truth is even more stark.
Roman knows that the only way for his younger sister and brother to survive is for them to somehow escape the walls of the ghetto, so he explores every opportunity to secure them an exit, no matter how unlawful these avenues may be.
Though not trapped inside the walls of the ghetto herself, Emilia is also far from free. In fact, she’s not even free to go by her real name. To those in Warsaw, she is Elzbieta. She lives with a man and woman she calls father and mother, though, only a few years ago, they were mere acquaintances.
Emilia didn’t leave her former life behind by choice, but instead by necessity. First, the Nazis murdered her father. Then, when her brother was found to be helping Jews, they murdered him as well, but not before vowing to wipe out any remaining members of his family as well.
Desperate not to lose the little girl who had filled the hole in their previously childless family, the man and woman who had raised Emilia since her father’s death fled to Warsaw, hoping to keep Emilia's connection to her fugitive brother a secret and, in doing so, keep her safe.
Though Emilia values her safety, she cannot turn a blind eye to what the Nazis are doing. Set on justice and driven by a compulsion to help, she works to position herself as a member of the rebellion.
She knows that, should her involvement be discovered, there will be consequences. But, if she doesn’t participate, she can’t help but believe there will be consequences for her soul.
As I have come to expect from Kelly Rimmer’s historical fiction work, this novel was absolutely stunning. Beautifully paced and packed with scenes that hurt your heart, it is honestly flawless.
This book was, inarguably, a difficult read. With page after page, scene after scene, of absolute devastation, it will almost certainly rock your foundation.
But, as I have come to learn recently, there is danger in avoiding things that hurt. And, while this novel hurts, the story it contains is an important one. Because it’s a story about humans, the good and the bad.
It’s a story about what has happened.
And it’s a story about what could happen if people turn a blind eye.
The Warsaw Orphan is an absolute must-read
It earns an easy 5 out of 5 cocktails.
Have you made any changes to your reading habits recently? What are you trying to read more of and why? Tell me about it in the comments, below.
It’s going to take a minute to get over this book hangover and select my next read. Want to see what I pick? Subscribe to updates in the sidebar on the right and follow me on Goodreads.
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*I was provided a gifted copy of this title by the publisher*
