Remote Sympathy

Frau Greta Hahn expected to miss Munich, but her new home at Buchenwald is even finer, and Europe's best craftsmen are on hand to make whatever the officers' wives want. Beyond the surrounding forest lies the camp, where her husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, has become the camp's administrator, struggling with corruption, short supplies and a growing prison population. Greta has cancer, and Hahn has Dr Lenard Weber imprisoned there to treat her with the Sympathetic Vitaliser, a device Weber built a decade earlier and once thought could cure the disease. Weber is unsure it works but hopes it might save a life, and Hahn keeps from him what has become of his Jewish wife and daughter. Diaries, letters, interviews and the voices of Weimar's townspeople examine how people choose not to see.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

Germany, 1940s–1950s

First published

2020

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9781776563203 (Victoria University Press, New Zealand)

9781609456276 (Europa Editions, United States)

9781787702660 (Europa Editions, United Kingdom)

9781787703711 (Europa Editions, United Kingdom)

9781776923144 (Te Herenga Waka University Press, New Zealand)