The Shame of Survival

I, childhood, in an act of defiance, 1 Irena refused to greet the Soviet I delegation with flowers on a visit 1 to the textileplant where her father i worked; as an adult, in a dream, j she saw a snow statue of Lenin that I melted in the sun. Or, in a series of , semidocumentary and semifictional 1 sketches entwining real and fantas , tic events, Irena ruminates on her 1 past and thewinding paths of her I parents, friends, and lovers. [ The second part, "Dictionaries," i is a stringof short essays inwhich,| tongue in cheek, Irena defines her ? favoritewords. The scholarly ety , mologies and definitions, however, 1 swerve into all sorts of digressions , and analogies, which interweave 1 ideas, memories, expectations, and I quotes from literature and art to J narrate how theworld, time, and t human lives are, have always been, I and will always be one. ? NikitaNankov , Gallipoli, Turkey It UrsulaMahlendorf.The Shame of Sur [ vival:Working through a Nazi Child i hood. University Park. Pennsylvania ] State University Press.2009.365 pages, ? ill.$29.95. isbn978-0-271-03447-8 1 Born in 1929, Ursula Mahlendorf 1 belongs to the generation often 1 referred to as "Hitler's Children/' a 1 generation robbed of its childhood, j subjected tomass indoctrination in 1 Nazi youth organizations?the Hit ! 1erJugend (hj) and Bund deutscher 1 M?del (bdm)?and inadvertently 1 implicated in theNazi regime. The 1 young, na?ve Ursula relished the 1 sense of community fosteredby the [ BDM and became an ardent Hitler 1 supporter, something she regretted , shortlyafter the war and has spent a ? lifetimecoming to terms with. , As the subtitle of her autobi 1 ography implies, Shame of Survival The Shame of Survival Working Through aNa?CMdhood is part of an ongoing process of mourning. Published at the end of a successful career as a professor of German Studies at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, Mahlen dorfs memoir isa relentlesslyhonest self-examination of her childhood under Nazism and itspsychic after life,an enterprise that is of a piece with her research and pedagogical agenda. Throughout her academic career,Mahlendorf feltobligated to teach students about German culpa bility and responsibility. Although too young to have participated in Nazi atrocities, she rejectsHelmut Kohl's apologetic notion of the "Gnade der sp?ten Geburt" (for tune of belated birth). Haunted by the specter of how narrowly she escaped becoming a perpetrator, she takes up J?rgenHabermas's call to Germans to "keep alive the memory of the sufferingof thosemurdered by German hands." "I felt thatas a teacher ofGerman literature, I had a special obligation to speak tomy students about what we Germans had participated in and what had happened to us." Years of therapy working through the trauma of her childhood and a career of reading literary and cultural texts through the lens of psychoanalytic theory = make Mahlendorf well poised to = undertake this impressive work of = Vergangenheitsbew?ltigung (struggle = to come to terms with thepast), = Her memoir is compelling = reading for anyone interested in = learningwhat it was like fora sen- = sitive girl to come of age inHit- = ler's Germany and how a morally = responsible woman has dealt with = that legacy. Ursula Mahlendorf's = self-consciously feminist perspec- = tive, her attention to gender and = class, and her awareness that the = private is political make Shame of = Survival an important contribution = to our understanding of fascism in = everyday life. = Anna K. Kuhn = University ofCalifornia,Davis = Vesna Marie Bluebird. New York.Soft = Skull/Counterpoint. 2009. 227 pages. = $14.95. ISBN 978-1 -59376-258-2| Among thememoirs of theBosnian = War (1992-95), Bluebird possesses a = distinctive voice that remains close = to the consciousness of a bright, = reflective teen displaced from = Mos tar to England. Vesna Marie = was sixteen when her mother sent = herwith her older sisterby bus con- = voy fromCroatia through Europe = to England to protect them from = the violence unfolding in Bosnia. = Belonging neither to England nor 5 to the adult world around her, the = younger Vesna remains slightlydis- = tanced fromher experiences, a keen = observer who sharply etches por- = traitsof Bosnians and English alike. = In a supple English of fresh simi- = les, sharp details, and irony, Marie = shapes an

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