“Life turns on the decisions we make, the single moments that transform everything.”–Kristin Harmel, The Book of Lost Names
During WWII, many brave individuals worked to rescue French Jewish children from certain death by forging paperwork and getting them across the border into Switzerland. This book is based on an amazing true story.
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired widowed librarian in Florida, sees an image of a book from her past while shelving books. It is The Book of Lost Names, a book she hasn’t seen in over sixty years. The article with the image tells of libraries looted by the Nazis and how this book was one thought to have been taken near the end of the war. An effort was being made to reunite the books with the libraries they were stolen from. This particular book was intriguing because there was some type of code written in it and no one knew what it meant. No one, but Eva, that is.
As a graduate student in 1942, Eva is forced to leave Paris and finds her way to a small mountain town in the free zone. There she puts her talents to use forging documents for Jewish children to escape France. The children are given new names but Eva believes it is important to keep a record of the children’s actual names so when the time comes they can be reunited with their families. Using a complicated code, the names are recorded in an 18th century religious text, which becomes The Book of Lost Names. The group assisting the children is close knit and careful but when they are betrayed, the consequences are enormous.
I am drawn to books about WWII and I especially love ones like this that are based on true events illustrating the selflessness and courage of so many in such terrible circumstances. Kristin Harmel has written a page turning story that celebrates resilience and hope.
Content Advisory: Some language, references to sex, children in dangerous situations, suicide, war, the Holocaust