Powerful And Heartbreaking

People Like Us by Louise Fein is a powerful and heartbreaking historical novel. It consumed me as I read. Louise Fein grounded her novel in fact which makes it all the more powerful and shocking.

The novel is set in Leipzig in the 1930’s. It is told in the first person from the point of view of an SS officer’s daughter.

The reader is horrified to see the extent to which the young (and the old) are brainwashed, and the pedestal on which they place Hitler. “Community work is – is holy. It brings us closer to the Fuhrer.” What terrible, awful thinking. Hitler is seen as a god and he was even prayed to. The thought of Hitler drove a character’s thoughts and actions. The eyes of the vast majority of a nation were blinded to the evil reality.

As a modern reader, it is totally incomprehensible and utterly appalling to witness Hitler and the Nazis brainwashing a nation. People are the same the world over. If you cut us, we all bleed the same and we all have hopes and dreams.

There are some truly harrowing scenes to read within the book.