Book Review: There was a garden in Nuremberg

Book Review

Ann Beaglehole

Book Review by Ann Beaglehole

There was a garden in Nuremberg 

Navina Michal Clemerson 

On the cover of Navina Clemerson’s There was a garden in Nuremberg is a photo of Nuremberg in ruins. The Bavarian city, severely damaged by Allied bombing during World War Two, is the setting for Clemerson’s engrossing and harrowing debut novel about the Mannheim family: father Walter, mother Sonia, son Max, aged 12 at the start of the story, and daughter Helena, two years younger. Grandmother Oma, Sonia’s sister Fanny, and several other members of the large Jewish extended family feature in the novel, which is dedicated to the author’s mother, and is largely based on true events. When the story begins, Hitler has just become Chancellor of the Reich. ‘Bad things are happening at the moment, Max’, Walter says, ‘and not just to Jews. Please keep in mind that this regime will not last.’ Already the Mannheim children are being stigmatised and isolated at school. Sonia, worried about the family’s safety, wants to start arranging their emigration. Walter, who feels 100% German, disagrees. He fought in World War One for the country he loves. He has an Iron Cross and nightmares to show for his sacrifice. 

Clemerson is alert to the growing tensions between Walter and Sonia. She cannot emigrate without him but he insists he has work to do for the community and refuses to even think about emigration. There is another reason why Walter won’t leave. He is preoccupied with bringing top Nazi policeman Streicher, who is diddling the Nazi Party, to justice. Walter wants his old friend Benno Martin, also in the Police, to take up the matter. His faith in Benno is not dented even when Benno joins the SS. Walter’s obsession is hard to fathom. As Sonia says, ‘Why should you care, Walter?’ In her view, the two Nazis are as bad as each other.

The viewpoint of the book shifts effectively between members of the family. The different voices challenge and complement each other. A more light hearted part of the book is Helena’s positive experience at an enlightened progressive boarding school, until it is destroyed by the Nazis. A measure of relief comes from small acts of courage, such as the support given to Max by his teacher, and the work of Quakers (the Society of Friends) with refugees. But instances of reprieve are few compared to the many acts of brutality and betrayal. 

In 1935 the Nuremberg laws revoked German Jews’ citizenship. ‘From one day to the next, they were labelled alien, foreign, though Jews had lived in Germany for over a thousand years.’ The Mannheims’ daily life is filled with the growing number of restrictions and indignities. The family’s washerwoman, a Communist, disappears, and later, the Gestapo deliver her ashes. Friends are arrested. A few are released and emigrate; some, sent to Dachau, don’t return. People kill themselves. 

Clemerson’s book sheds light on the tormented history. Why did German people of all walks of life behave passively, or with indifference, or actively support the Nazi regime? When Walter has a chance encounter with his old piano teacher, she seems aware, yet unaware, of what was happening to Jews. 

 With considerable psychological insight, Clemerson shows the impact on the family of Walter’s denial of what has become obvious – that Jews have no future in Nazi Germany. Even after the Nazis demolish the synagogue; even after the terror of Kristallnacht; no matter what indignity and atrocity befalls, he remains reluctant to leave. 

There has been debate on these issues, for example about the possibility and extent of Jewish resistance. How effective were Jewish leaders? Clemerson conveys the fraught atmosphere and the responses of terrified, vulnerable, yet resilient, people. The tension builds as the reader waits, along with the family, for Walter’s decision. Only when he suffers brutal treatment by the SA does he finally accept the urgency of their departure. 

Later in the book, Clemerson turns to the plight of the family as refugees; their struggle to find work in England and to make ends meet. Walter and Sonia find English reserve and indifference a huge relief after German antisemitism and persecution. But their troubles are not over. The children remain stuck in France, their fate uncertain. The book is gripping from beginning to the end when the revelations come about who was responsible for the family’s rescue. 

Navina Michal Clemerson

Clemerson’s novel benefits from her extensive research, contributing to its immediacy through telling details, bringing to life the Jewish calamity, the intergenerational effects and the refugee experience. The book’s mostly linear structure makes for a clear, highly readable story, a real page turner. I expect the book will deeply impress readers whether or not they are familiar with the fraught history of Nazi persecution of Jews during the 1930s or are relative newcomers to the horrific events which culminated in the Holocaust. 

Author Navina Clemerson was born in London to refugee parents and grew up in France. After some years in Israel and Europe, she settled with her family in Wellington. 

There was a garden in Nuremberg is published by Amsterdam Publishers, international publishers of Holocaust related books. The book is available on Amazon, at Unity Books in Wellington and at Good Books in Wellington.

Amsterdam Publishers, The Netherlands 

ISBN 9789493231542 (Paperback)

ISBN 9789493231559 (ebook)

Ann Beaglehole is an author, Wellington reviewer and historian. Her parents were Holocaust survivors.