We have read much about the great wars. The stories from the second great war have simultaneously transfixed and horrified us. How one nation could perpetuate such horror on humans is unimaginable, yet if we deny the truths from that time surely we would more easily be a willing future participant if history were to repeat.
Always, when reading a story from WWII, I cheer the allies and clench my fists at the Germans. However, I received another viewpoint when reading When Time Stood Still. The author, Gisela Roediger was a native German when the war broke out. Like the other German young people, Gisela had grown up in the Hitler Youth and was fiercely nationalistic. As a secretary in a dreary Hamburg office when the bombs fell, she enlisted …show more content…
I enjoyed the first-person perspective including the thoughts and emotions behind the words and actions. I also loved the innocent love story. Hindsight being able to afford a more complete understanding of situations, it was sometimes difficult to comprehend that a person could have lived through that war and not perceived the atrocities that happened. In Gisela’s defense, she lived in Russia for a significant portion of the war and received only propaganda news.
The one flaw to the story is found in Gisela’s apparent naiveté. She did not appear to fully grasp the significance of the time in which she lived. That may be due to her relatively young age (or the lack of social media), but I tend to give more credit to modern 20-somethings in their ability to comprehend world events. I feel that Gisela was a young person who wanted to fully enjoy life but was born in the wrong country in the wrong time period.
Gisela’s writing style is easy to read. You feel as though you personally know the people she writes about. She does not gloss over character flaws or artificially inflate anyone’s overall character and personality. The pacing was natural, not too fast or too slow, but unfolded as it would in real life. Suspense was built when Gisela was waiting impatiently for
Always, when reading a story from WWII, I cheer the allies and clench my fists at the Germans. However, I received another viewpoint when reading When Time Stood Still. The author, Gisela Roediger was a native German when the war broke out. Like the other German young people, Gisela had grown up in the Hitler Youth and was fiercely nationalistic. As a secretary in a dreary Hamburg office when the bombs fell, she enlisted …show more content…
I enjoyed the first-person perspective including the thoughts and emotions behind the words and actions. I also loved the innocent love story. Hindsight being able to afford a more complete understanding of situations, it was sometimes difficult to comprehend that a person could have lived through that war and not perceived the atrocities that happened. In Gisela’s defense, she lived in Russia for a significant portion of the war and received only propaganda news.
The one flaw to the story is found in Gisela’s apparent naiveté. She did not appear to fully grasp the significance of the time in which she lived. That may be due to her relatively young age (or the lack of social media), but I tend to give more credit to modern 20-somethings in their ability to comprehend world events. I feel that Gisela was a young person who wanted to fully enjoy life but was born in the wrong country in the wrong time period.
Gisela’s writing style is easy to read. You feel as though you personally know the people she writes about. She does not gloss over character flaws or artificially inflate anyone’s overall character and personality. The pacing was natural, not too fast or too slow, but unfolded as it would in real life. Suspense was built when Gisela was waiting impatiently for