Customer Reviews

auf Wiedersehen

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Lately, I've been having something of a World War II binge. I watched Band of Brothers from start to finish while concurrently being enthralled by the National Geographic documentary Apocalypse: World War Two. Then auf Wiedersehen landed on my doorstep. It was, as it turns out, the perfect complement to my self education in the horror of previous generations. Not only is it a memoir, it is a memoir of a young German girl and the impact that the war had on her and her family, a vice we don't often hear from. The story picks up in the final scenes of World War Two - the Russians are closing in from the East, the Americans and the British approaching from the West. Hitler's Germany is disintegrating and as a result, her people are suffering.

Some 50 million people died as a result of this war: soldiers blown up in trenches; civilians bombed in their homes; Jews, Gyspies and homosexuals persecuted and tortured for not fitting the ideals of a madman, and more. It's just too colossal a figure to give any serious emotional or intellectual consideration to. The horror is too much, the body count too high. No words can stretch far enough to do it justice. Which is where this book excels: it doesn't try to. It quietly tells the story of one girl and that's all. Occasionally there are facts about recognizable events from the war in the narrative: the bombing of Dresden, the liberation of the Treblinka concentration camp, the bombing of Hiroshima, but overall the narrative focuses firmly on the domestic and the interior. Something we can all relate to and process.

Forced from their comfortable home, Christa and her family are made refugees. They are homeless and at the mercy of those around them. Their mother's Prussian pride takes a beating, their stomachs are left empty and they endure the heartbreak of having to constantly say auf Wiedersehen to those they hold dear. Yet, through it all, their spirit triumphs - particularly Christa's. Her effervescent personality and headlong enthusiasm for life beams out from the pages as she falls in 'love' with one boy after the next, puts on puppet shows with new-found friends and prays fervently to God to get her out of attending school.

This book is a quick, yet satisfying read. I read it all on the evening that I received it and enjoyed every last page. If there were anything to criticize about this book, however, it would have to be its length. I got to the final pages and wanted to know more - it seemed that there could be so much more said and explored. What happened next? How did they cope with the next set of new circumstances? At 142 pages, there was certainly room for more story. Having said that, the 142 pages that we do get are very good. Holder Ocker writes beautifully and the character of her younger self is engaging and loveable. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WWII, loves memoirs or simply enjoys a good, well-written yarn from teenaged readers through to adults. You won't be disappointed.

This touching and well-written book is the universal story of many immigrants who suffer displacement and loss because they seek a better and, more importantly, more honorable life.

The children's escapades within the ruins of war are funny and heart-warming. The loss of home is heart-wrenching and palpable. But it is the strength of Christa's mother to undertake this journey that is particularly admirable and visionary.

Christa Holder Ocker has the ability to portray in her characters those unique attributes which allow the reader to understand why such a journey from a previously comfortable home to an unknown, but hopeful future, was undertaken.

It is a book well worth reading.

I finally got round to purchasing and reading auf Wiedersehn. It is always interesting and intriguing to read an account of that harrowing time period during the war, and the years immediately after the war. When I was young I often heard my parents and their friends talking about it, and so many of them had, in one way or another, been through it, and experienced their own hardships and loss. Also, as a child, while living in Switzerland, and going traveling with my parents to Germany and Austria, I saw so many people with their arms shot off, or missing a leg. In my one year in a German school, our school doctor was missing a nose (never had plastic surgery done), and my 8th grade teacher barely had a voice left, because she was covered in rubble for three days during the war.

Seeing wartime Germany through the eyes of a child is poignant, because simple observations take on bigger meanings. The atrocities, hardships and sufferings are enhanced through the innocent outlook of a child, who cannot yet comprehend the scope of the war. The smell of the prevailing "evil" percolates into the present, and the author was able to thread that into her story in a subtle manner. Though life was hard, one could sense that for many it was so much worse. One sensed the shadow side of humanity in the periphery. However, also underscored is the goodness of humanity, even in the worst of times. The will to survive, as shown in auf Wiedersehen, gives hope.

Eric Muller

There are wars around the globe, and the headlines allow us to loose track of the moral and physical struggle that confronts any ordinary, decent family caught up in these events. What we see in this book is a rare glimpse into issues, both small and large, that affect the existence and evolution of such a family. We learn, for instance, what chores and accomplishments need to be mastered to survive, how the moral issues are handled within the framework of extreme threat to loved ones, and how the determination to leave and get to American become steps to be mastered.

What makes the book so readable is that the weighty matters which must be handled are balanced by a portrait of an innocent and appealing young girl and the personalities of her parents, siblings, and friends - so that we enter a world that is as endearingly human as it is philosophically challenging.

This book rounded out my views of World War II Germany, providing me with descriptions and facts which I never had the chance to think about before. I recommend the book strongly to teens and young adults as well as to adults who will be taken to a world that ranges from the friendships and dreams of young children to the harsh realities of adults coping with conditions that are imposed on them rather than chosen.

I really didn't know what to expect when I began reading this book. I think I was most concerned thinking it would have lots of words I would not be able to recognize hence making it hard for me to capture the grace of what the author wanted us to know but my fears quickly went away as I began reading and although there were some foreign words to me I was easily able to understand what they meant and even felt happy that I not only was reading out of my usual genre but was learning new things in the process! I wanted to stretch myself and emerge from my little fantasy comfort zone and take a dive into some real life reading, so to speak, and I was not dissappointed at all!

Christa tells her story so beautifully and with so much real life emotion that is so easy to read and follow along as if I'm there with her and her family as they migrate to America working their way thru all the Russian checkpoints. So many times I was holding my breath as if the events were unfolding in this time and space.

What a wonderful journey Christa has shared with me.

Auf Wiedershen by Christa Holder Ocker:

World War II Through The Eyes Of A German Girl tells the poignant true story of a girl(Christa), whose father (Vati) is serving in the German Army and the mother (Mutti) who is left behind to take care of Christa and her older sister Rosel. Mutti is a hard working and very proud woman who has nothing good to say about the Nazis and Hitler in particular. The story takes place more towards the end of the war in Gorlitz, Germany. Mutti and her family, including a neighbor, Frau Omichen and her son Gunter, are evacuated from the only home they have known where they had lived a peaceful, comfortable life. They now have to say auf Wiedersehen, thus the title, to all they know and hold dear. They leave their home without money and only what they can wear and a few valuables which they need to sell to eat and have a place to live.

The story takes place over a six year period telling the struggle of this family trying to live as normal a life as possible under sometimes deplorable circumstances. When Vati finally finds his family after the war, he and Mutti decide that they will go to America. With the assistance of an old friend of Mutti's, that is what they do but they need to get across Russian checkpoints first which was not an easy task.

In short chapters the author is able to put across successfully to the reader the story of her young years, the daily struggles and sometimes good times that her very strong family lives in during the aftermath of this war. She describes the people they meet on this journey, including other family members that they find. There are good times and little celebrations that enable this family to stick together no matter the circumstances.

I enjoyed the story very much, it reminded me a bit of The Diary of Anne Frank. The hard times were told in such a way as to not make a depressing time for the German people hard to read. During a war story we more often than not hear the American side of the hardships of war and we do not often get the chance to read about how this war affected the German people. The story only touched briefly on the concentration camps because this family was not in one and I think that to keep the innocence of the main character it was not really part of their story.

This is a must read if the history of WWII is interesting to you.

This slim memoir chronicles the years between Christa's family's evacuation before the advancing Red Army towards the end of WWII and their immigration to New Jersey. During this time, Christa, her sister, her parents, and, at times, her aunt and cousins, must pick up and move at a moment's notice on multiple occasions. Christa, who is an outgoing 7 year old at the opening of this memoir, makes many friends as she goes along: a horse named Lottie, an American soldier who gives her Hershey bars, the once-cranky owner of the villa where she and her family were placed during the evacuation, and the multitude of children who are also in some state of homelessness like she is. Every time her family moves, she must say goodbye, auf Wiedersehen, to her friends. It is hard enough, even with the help of the Red Cross, to keep track of family members during this upheaval. Christa is under no illusions that she will ever see any of these friends again.

Still, this is an uplifting memoir about how, even in the depths of war, life goes on. Christa and her friends play, put on puppet shows,\ and generally make do. The horrors of WWII are not kept out of this book, but they are kept out of the children's consciousness. Overheard conversations covering everything from the atrocities of the SS to how Christa's friend Gunter managed to get a little brother even though she wished for one more are present, but not understood by Christa. Readers will know what is going on, how it is affecting the lives of adults, and how much trouble they go to in order to keep the worst of it from their children.

This was published as an adult book, but I could definitely see even young teens reading it as part of a WWII or memoir unit. Content wise, auf Widersehen shows a lot less of the atrocities than current populars for young adults dealing with this subject matter, The Book Thief and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and it is a very un-prohibitive 142 pages short.

What's it like growing up under the rule of a man whose name who has become synonymous with evil? "Auf Wiedersehen: World War II Through the Eyes of a German Girl" tells the story of growing up as a young girl during Hitler's Nazi regime. Giving a glimpse of the life of the average German person during this time period and how Germany's defeat radically changed her life, "Auf Wiedersehen" is a unique read about a perspective so often vilified in history.

This book is a real page turner as you read about the impact of the WW2 on a family in Germany. The characters and situations are well-told & believable! As one who was in America at that time, I got new insights into what life was like on the other side. I highly recommend this book!

Christa Ocker had me believing she was still the young girl in Germany experiencing emotions I had forgotten we all had. An absorbing read by an author able to step back in time and recount small incidents that, seen from our adult eyes, carry great importance.