Leni: The life and work of Leni Riefenstahl, by Steven Bach

This audio book was read by Henrietta Tiefenthaler, and was 14 hours and 26 minutes long.

I was already aware of who Leni Riefenstahl was because I had seen a story about her on television when I was a teenager. She was famous for being the Third Reich's film maker. She was a talented director who made what has been called the best documentary ever by her harshest critic. And until 2003, she was still alive, and still unrepentant about her work for Hitler.

Born in 1902, she was the daughter of a successful plumber and a woman who encouraged her dreams of being a dancer. She began her career in the middle of the silent film era, and she gradually evolved from dancer to romantic adventure to an interest in directing her own films. After reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf on a train, she decided she had to meet him. Since she was a minor film starlet that Hitler admired, she got her wish.

Leni Riefenstahl leveraged her relationship with Hitler, her talent and ambition, and the vacuum left by the German film industry's expulsion of the Jews, into an opportunity to be the Reich's official filmographer. Her documentaries of Nazi rallies and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin made her internationally famous, and after the WW2, almost universally despised.

If this book were only about her work for Hitler, it would probably be interesting enough. But hers was the story that refused to die. After avoiding prison, and being labeled as only a "fellow traveler" in the spectrum of guilt, she thought she was off the hook and could continue with her career. But multitudes had been witnesses to her work, so there was always someone to remind the world that she was an unrepentant Nazi who brazenly lied about her past.

This book gets 4 stars, but Leni herself rates one flashbulb.

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky

This audiobook was obtained as a free download from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 13 hours and 13 minutes long, and came in two parts, the first read by Daniel Oreskes, and the other by Barbara Rosenblat.

This book is actually two novellas that were part of a planned set of five. They were written contemporaneously during and about the German occupation of France. The author, Irene Nemirovsky, died in Auschwitz after being deported as a stateless person of Jewish origin.

The first novella, "Storm in June", is about the fear and dread of the German invasion. The men of fighting age are all gone. Businesses are relocating on the fly. Carloads of possessions pass desperate refugees as they head for safer ground. Whole towns are stripped of their food as the hordes pass through. For these people, the war is a huge disappointment after defeating Germany in 1918. The veterans of that war feel as if their sacrifice was for nothing. The surrender of France is a relief, just to stop the bombs and the fear of death.

The second, "Dolce", deals with the effects on the citizens of the occupation. Wealthy families host German officers, some with more grace than others. Young women, coming of age when all the young men are Germans, weigh their natural feelings against the possibility that these young men may have killed or imprisoned their fathers and brothers.

As much as it's a tragedy that the rest of this work was never finished, it is also the height of irony that such a beautifully written account was halted by the author's date with the Holocaust. And it's also a revealing look at a part of history that does not get much coverage: the lives of invaders and collaborators, when all the French had was the Passive Resistance.

I wanted it to go on. It is sad that it could not. 4 stars.

Straight Into Darkness, by Faye Kellerman

This audiobook came from the Alachua County Library, was on 12 CDs, and was narrated by Paul Michael.

Axel Berg is a Munich policeman during the mid 1920s. He is investigating a series of brutal murders in the midst of tumultuous time. Hitler is on the rise, Jews are expendable, and they make excellent suspects. The trouble is that Berg is a conscientious policeman who wants to catch the actual killer. He also has a hard time fitting in with the anti-semitic mania. He is not a lover of the Jews, but neither can he be bothered looking for reasons to persecute them. He is a WW1 veteran, of Danish origins, fond of "subversive" art and music, and cheats on his wife. He is not lovable, but in contrast to the lunacy around him, he is heroic.

Excellent characters in a solid story during intriguing times, this one just slips into 4 star territory.

The Pleasing Hour, by Lily King

This audio book was obtained for free from NetLibrary.com. It was 8 hours and 54 minutes long, and was narrated by Suzanne Toren.

This was a pretty slow moving story of an American au pair who lands a job with a family that lives on a house boat. The mother, Nicole, is stern and aloof with her American helper, who eventually nurses a crush on the husband, Marc. The feeling is mutual, but nothing comes of it.

This book was a sort of character study for its own sake. I found myself checking to see how much time it had left several times. Well written, but forgettable. I give it 2 stars.

Night, by Elie Wiesel

This audio book was 4 hours and 17 minutes long, including a reading of Wiesel's speech to the Nobel Prize committee in 1986. It was free from NetLibrary.com.

This book was originally published the year I was born, 1958. That was 13 years after Elie Wiesel's liberation from the German death camps at the age of 17.

When I was growing up, all adults still had a fresh remembrance of the monstrous regime that had terrorized the world, and the Holocaust was already a part of the vocabulary. I saw all the movies about Nazi atrocities, and took seriously my duty as a part of humanity to remember what was done to the Jews and other minorities. How I missed this book is a wonder.

This story sets itself apart from the rest of my personal witness of the media's rendition of the Holocaust. Most books and movies focus on the cruel inhumanity of how the Jews were treated. Wiesel's book spends the first half documenting the denial of the Jews as they saw it coming. Yes, there are a couple of voices in the wilderness, but they are usually scorned and despised for their prescience.

This simple account, unadorned by the gratuitous violence of most Holocaust movies, made it easy for me to believe that the average German citizen could have been in the same state of unbelief while this was happening. It is also a grim warning to all of us that neutrality only benefits the oppressor, as Wiesel states in his speech to the Nobel committee. We must take sides in the resistance to dictators. And we must do it early. At least, that's what I came away with. And this gets 4 stars.

Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson

This book was from the Alachua County Library, was an unabridged audiobook on 13 CDs, and was read by Michael Prichard.

If you are a big fan of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels on audio, you will feel right at home with the familiar voice of Michael Prichard. His is the perfect voice for these stories of the deep. The big difference is that this is a true story without the campy characters to make your eyes roll.

After a fisherman snags his nets on a mysterious wreck, he brings it to the attention of a legendary diver who has gone to seed named Bill Nagel. This man knows he will need the help of the very best divers he can find, so he assembles a team of experienced men who are willing to take a chance.

One of the men who answers the call is John Chatterton, a former army medic who is a commercial diver. He makes the discovery that what they have found is a submarine of unknown origin. It is at a depth of about 230 feet, which is a very dangerous place for any diver to work.

It is 7 years and 3 dead divers before Chatterton and a later addition to the team, Richie Kohler, finally uncover the identity of what they knew was a WW2 German U-boat with its full crew of skeletal dead. They defy death, personal tragedy, and the record of history in their dogged pursuit of truth about the men who died off the coast of New Jersey in the 1940s. And eventually they find closure for themselves and the families of the German sailors who died half a century before.

This was a very moving story about the men who became obsessed with their own personal search for truth. From John Chatterton's search for himself as a medic in Viet Nam to the recreation of the lives of the men who died on the U-boat, as told by the crew member who missed the boat to eternity, this story will get inside your head and your heart all the way to the end.

As a special bonus, there is an interview at the end with John Chatterton and Richie Kohler. As a special bonus to you now, there is a great website about the wreck they found, and it's right here! This book was a 4 star masterpiece.

Loot, by Aaron Elkins

This novel was my first time experience with this author. I downloaded the audiobook from NetLibrary.com. It was 11:03:39 long, and was narrated by Paul Hecht.

A pawn shop owner buys a painting from a mysterious Russian visitor, and it turns out to be a very rare painting that was part of the looting of the Jews by the Nazis. During the last gasps of WW2, a truckload of art was seized by a Russian patrol, and then it all disappeared until after the fall of the Soviet Union. And now this painting has made its way to Boston.

The owner calls in a friend, Ben Revere, who is an art expert who has done some contract work for the police. Ben, who is our main character, believes this is a rare Valasquez, and tells his friend that they should get the police involved. After Ben leaves, his friend is beaten to death in his shop, but the painting is still in his safe, providing a good bit of evidence to begin his search for who killed his friend, and where this masterpiece came from.

Although this book is not a masterpiece, it was a well-paced, easy read with good characters and an interesting background story: the ever-circulating treasures of the Holocaust. It gets 3 stars if you just want to be entertained, 2 if you wanted violence and bloodshed.