4 out of 4 stars
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Always, when reading a story from WWII, I cheer the allies and clench my fists at the Germans. However, I received another viewpoint when reading When Time Stood Still. The author, Gisela Roediger was a native German when the war broke out. Like the other German young people, Gisela had grown up in the Hitler Youth and was fiercely nationalistic. As a secretary in a dreary Hamburg office when the bombs fell, she enlisted in the armed forces to escape living in a war zone. Told in her own words, Gisela’s story starts with the Allied bombing of Hamburg and finishes after the war is over.
Against the backdrop of war, comes a story of sweet love and a reminder that not all Germans were monsters. I enjoyed the first-person perspective, including the thoughts and emotions behind the words and actions. I also loved the innocent love story. Hindsight being able to afford a fuller understanding of situations, it was sometimes difficult to comprehend that a person could have lived through that war and not perceived the atrocities that happened. In Gisela’s defense, she lived in Russia for a significant portion of the war and received only propaganda news.
The one flaw with the story is found in Gisela’s apparent naiveté. She did not appear to fully grasp the significance of the time in which she lived. That may be due to her relatively young age (or the lack of social media), but I tend to give more credit to modern 20-somethings in their ability to comprehend world events. I feel that Gisela was a young person who wanted to fully enjoy life but was born in the wrong country and the wrong time period.
Gisela’s writing style is easy to read. You feel as though you personally know the people she writes about. She does not gloss over character flaws or artificially inflate anyone’s overall character and personality. The pacing was enjoyable, not too fast or too slow, but unfolded as it would in real life with suspense occurring naturally as Gisela waited impatiently for an event or news of an event.
When Time Stood Still deliberately left out most of the horrors of war and rather focused on Gisela's love story as the central plot. Although this was ultimately a romance, it was definitely chaste enough that I would be comfortable recommending this to nearly any age. However, younger readers would not have the background information necessary to fully appreciate a book from this time period, particularly an autobiography, so I would recommend this only for teens and older.
Finally, I give this 4 out of 4 stars. While it did not change my mind about the human disaster that took place during WWII, it is a solid story that provides an intimate look into the mind of one young person—who could have been any of us—during one of the world’s darkest moments. We have read much about the great wars. The stories from the second great war have simultaneously transfixed and horrified us. How one nation could perpetrate such horror on humans is unimaginable, yet if we deny the truths from that time, surely we would more easily be a willing future participant if history were to repeat.
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When Time Stood Still
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