In her debut, journalist and documentary filmmaker Schwarz offers a powerful and unflinching look at Germany during World War II and Europe's postwar reckoning with far-right nationalism, and calls for readers not to forget the painful lessons learned. Using her own family as a framework, she brings to life Germans who were complicit in Nazi atrocities; for example, her grandfather was a member of the Nazi Party because it gave him more business opportunities. Schwarz describes a collective amnesia after the war; a denial of wrongdoing until the 1960s, when a combination of factors contributed to radical change in the way Germany viewed the past, including demand from younger generations that their parents take responsibility for what they did and didn't do. This "memory work" requires an examination of the past with an intersecting ethical and historical viewpoint, and Schwarz believes that such work is vital in preventing a lapse into far-right nationalism, which she connects to several contemporary movements across the Western world. VERDICT In searing yet engaging prose, Schwarz makes her case for the need for memory work in this highly recommended read for fans of memoirs and World War II history. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/19.]--Crystal Goldman, Univ. of California, San Diego Lib.

In this astute debut, German-French journalist Schwarz, granddaughter of a Nazi Party member, examines how the denials and excuses of people like her German grandparents helped create the current revival of alt-right nationalism. While digging through family file cabinets in Manheim, Germany, in the early 2000s, Schwarz discovers a document showing that her paternal grandfather purchased a Jewish family's oil company in 1938 for nearly nothing. She digs deeper into her family history and discovers that her grandparents attempted to justify their wartime activity as Mitläufer--"people who followed the current"--until the 1960s when the televised trial of former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann recalled mass murders and crimes against humanity, which most people had attempted to forget. As Schwarz explains, within decades, however, people like her grandparents attempted to rewrite or forgive past actions, which, in turn, allowed hatred to fester: "The most dangerous monster is not a megalomaniacal and violent leader, but us, the people who make him possible, who give him the power to lead." This timely memoir also serves as a perceptive look at the current rise of far-right nationalism throughout Europe and the U.S. (May)

In her first book, German-French journalist, author, and filmmaker Schwarz digs into three generations of family history to find the truth about her relatives lives during WWII. Living in Mannheim Germany, her grandparents were considered Mitlaufer, "people who followed the current." The majority of Germans found themselves in this category, which Schwarz argues made for "an accumulation of little blindnesses and small acts of cowardice that, when combined, created the necessary conditions for the worst state-orchestrated crimes known to humanity." Schwarz does not shy from Germany's crimes nor the acts of her own family, from her grandmother who admired Hitler to her grandfather who profited from the purchase of a Jewish-owned business. Schwarz culminates her memoir with a warning, applying Germany's mistakes to recent events in the U.S. and other countries. Schwarz cites the importance of a country's "memory work" and the value of sharing the story of "ordinary people, the Mitlaufer, and not only of heroes, victims or monsters." She cautions younger generations that the danger is not in the leader, but in those who allow him to lead. A timely must-read, this brutally honest memoir is also a smart historical analysis and a relevant warning for the future.

A German French journalist views amnesia about the Holocaust through the lens of her relatives' lives--and raises an alarm about far-right movements. Schwarz's grandparents defied a Hollywood trope of Europeans caught up in the cataclysms of World War II: They were neither Nazi thugs nor noble resistance fighters. Her German Protestant paternal grandparents, Karl and Lydia Schwarz, were Mitläufer, people who "followed the current" of the times and, by looking away, helped to keep Hitler in power. Karl was an opportunistic rather than ideological Nazi Party member who profited from a policy that allowed him to buy a small oil business cheaply from Jewish owners but paid up when proprietors' heirs later sued for reparations. In this exceptionally timely and well-reasoned debut, the author makes a powerful case that seeds of the recent resurgence of far-right nationalism in Europe were sown first by the denial and rationalizations of millions of people like her grandparents and then by postwar mythmaking that preempted the "memory work" needed to correct faulty recollections of Nazism. Germany has done heavy repair work--from creating Holocaust memorials to accepting more than 1 million refugees by the end of 2015--but France, Italy, Austria, and other countries lag far behind. Even in Germany, a backlash has arisen: After the Berlin Wall fell, "Eastalgia" parties sprang up in venues decorated with East German flags, banners, and other propaganda, and an extreme-right party holds its first Bundestag seat since 1949. Europeans used to be able count on American support in opposing tyrants, but that "safety net" unraveled with Donald Trump's election, and Schwarz draws extended parallels between the president's tactics and fascists' ("first, stoke fear"). History doesn't repeat itself, but "sociological and psychological mechanisms do," and this book, a deserving winner of the European Book Prize, shows clearly how a willful amnesia can poison nations that have sworn never to forget the Holocaust. The granddaughter of a Nazi Party member makes a powerful, convincing moral case for resisting toxic nationalism. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.