The Kommandant's Girl
Grade : C-

I have a real fascination with World War II, especially from the civilian point of view on the Eastern front and more than a passing interest in Holocaust literature. Given this, The Kommandant's Girl, the story of a young Jewish woman posing as a Gentile and working for the Krakow resistance, should have appealed to me. Unfortunately, the book had a number of flaws that kept if from being a satisfying reading experience.

Emma Bau is a Jew in Krakow right about the worst time possible to be a Jew in Krakow: 1939. Raised in an Orthodox family, she nonetheless married an assimilated Jew, Jacob Bau, right before the Nazis stormed the gates and everything began to go terribly wrong. Jacob immediately joined the resistance movement and told Emma to tell no one about her marriage, in case she is linked to his activities. So Emma returns to her parents' home and goes on with life, such as it is in occupied Poland. Eventually the Krakow Jews are moved to the Ghetto, and Emma is introduced to some of Jacob's resistance connections, one of whom offers her an out: life with Jacob's Aunt Krysia, posing as a Gentile – Anna Lipowski.

As Anna, Emma lives very quietly rarely going out until one day her aunt, a Catholic and the widow of a socially prominent Jewish musician, throws a dinner party to keep up appearances. There Anna/Emma makes the acquaintance of Kommandant Richwalder, a highly placed Nazi in the General Government. Richwalder, taken with Anna and her excellent German, offers her a position as his secretary, which Anna knows she must accept. Working in Castle Wawel, Anna has connections that the resistance is eager to use, and she begins a hesitant career as a spy. Eventually her relationship with the Kommandant morphs into a sexual one, and she becomes inextricably entwined in a very dangerous existence. Any mistakes, any suspicions or jealousies, could result in her death and the death of everyone she loves.

As a character, Emma/Anna is problematic. She's very passive, which would seem to be a catastrophic characteristic in a spy. Generally, she does what she is told. She is smuggled out of the ghetto by acquaintances of Jacob's. She is taken care of by Jacob's aunt. She gets her job with Kommandant Richwalder by chance and against her will. All of her spying "jobs" are mapped out and explained to her by others. She merely follows orders.

Additionally her worldview is generic; nothing about her seems particularly Polish, Jewish, or Orthodox. Yes, she attends certain Jewish rituals and knows some Jewish prayers, but she is strangely solitary for a Hasid. Her only connections in the ghetto, at least the only ones she worries for, are her parents and the Resistance workers she knows. No mention is made of people she presumably interacted with every day - women she went to the mikveh with, people she saw at her shul, playmates she had, a larger circle of relatives. Emma is also very well educated for an Orthodox woman of her day. Hasidic communities are generally quite insular and isolated from the general population around them. It is unlikely that she would ever work at a university library, if only because her parents would wish to prevent her from meeting unobservant men. Yet she does work there and she does meet and marry an assimilated Jew, and there is no real outcry from her parents about any of it, and neither does Emma anguish over this rather staggering break in tradition. There is simply nothing to Emma that seems Jewish. She doesn't observe the world from a Jewish perspective, and she doesn't ever anguish over the critical Jewish question of the period: how can a loving and omnipotent God allow his Chosen People to be obliterated in this way?

Emma's relationship with Richwalder is complex and ambiguous, the most interesting part of the novel. Richwalder himself has two sides: a loving and caring one with Anna - although Jenoff never explains what it is about her that he finds so intriguing - and a conscienceless bureaucratic one that facilitates the commission of terrible crimes on the Poles and the Jews. Is he sympathetic? Does she have the right to care for him in any way? Does her mission with the Resistance justify her breaking of her marriage vows? Unfortunately Emma comes to no profound conclusions about Richwalder or her role in all of this, and the book finishes in a strange melodramatic climax that leaves most of the important plot details up in the air.

The Kommandant's Girl is Pam Jenoff's first novel. It's an easy-to-read book set in a very interesting time, but her main character fails to be interesting or authentic enough to hold up the storyline. I would pass on this one.

Reviewed by Rachel Potter
Grade : C-

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date : February 22, 2007

Publication Date: 2007/03

Review Tags: World War II

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