The title of this often heart-wrenching book ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL by Susan Meissner is an anomaly of being created in God’s image. As stated in the opening with a quote from Genesis you are want to wonder what happens when the creation is less than perfect. You know not beautiful. But we aren’t talking about surface beauty here. The monsters of the Holocaust, Nazi doctors and SS officers were charged with the responsibility of ferreting out those less than beautiful. You know that expression, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' Well, there are many monsters in the world. And you are going to meet some in ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL. Somewhat reminded of a book/movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
Families were destroyed by the thirst for power and dominance by the Third Reich and their leader and followers. In their desire to be silent in the face of so much hatred and destruction, the actual number of perpetrators of this anger against humanity was allowed to fester and grow. Until all of Europe engaged in the scheme of a madman and his henchmen.
What is also revealed in ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL is the historical evidence of eugenics being practiced in America as late as the early 1900s. Especially in California but also in several other states in the union.
Practically from the beginning, you will find yourself reaching for tissues. It is that powerful. For those of us who lost entire families in the Holocaust ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL is again a reminder of how the world closed their collective eyes to what was going on in Europe.
Susan Meissner wrote ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL through the eyes of a woman who was not only a witness to the mass destruction of families but who sought to try and do her part in assaulting the Nazi effort in her own albeit small way. Again the work of a single woman with no political agenda but with a huge heart. Helen Calvert spent most of her life as a nanny. Her last placement was with the Maier family. A large family with many children whose youngest Brigitta is born with issues. Defects. Happy and truly well adjusted and loved by her family and Helen, Brigitta was doted on. Until she wasn’t.
In ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL we follow Helen before, during and after the war. We see it all through her eyes and Susan Meissner doesn’t mince words. This is historical fiction, but the facts come through each and every word written on a page. In a conversation, Helen is plainly told that it doesn’t matter what they think. They don’t have the power to change what is happening. The Nazis had decided this is the way it will be and so it is.
Helen was of the mind that it should have been stopped but people waited too long. Famous last words of the father of the last family Helen had worked for when questioned about his involvement. I had nothing to do with that. I had nothing to do with those camps. As an officer of the Wehrmacht, he was just following orders.
Folks who have written about this awful time in history often use Never Again as their mantra. Silence is indeed deadly.
Susan Meissner authored an important book. ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL is extraordinarily written. Her characters are developed with care and intelligence. The storyline moves along without a hiccup.
A heartrending story about a young mother’s fight to keep her daughter, and the terrible injustice that tears them apart, by the USA Today bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War. California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however—Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant. Banished by the Calverts, Rosanne believes she is bound for a home for unwed mothers. But she soon finds out she is not going to a home of any kind, but to a place that seeks to forcibly take her baby – and the chance for any future babies – from her.
Austria, 1947—After witnessing firsthand Adolf Hitler’s brutal pursuit of hereditary purity—especially with regard to “different children”—Helen Calvert, Truman’s sister, is ready to return to America for good. But when she arrives at her brother’s peaceful vineyard after decades working abroad, she is shocked to learn what really happened nine years earlier to the vinedresser’s daughter, a girl whom Helen had long ago befriended. In her determination to find Rosanne, Helen discovers a shocking American eugenics program—and learns that that while the war had been won in Europe, there are still terrifying battles to be fought at home.
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