The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
by Louise Murphy
Penguin, 2003
Reviewed by Charlotte Templin
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The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy Penguin, 2003 Reviewed by Charlotte Templin |
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In an act of desperation on the part of their parents, two Jewish children are left to fend for themselves in a forest in Eastern Poland in the last months of the Nazi occupation. Echoes of the Grimms' fairy tale are a recurrent motif in the story, in which the children take refuge with an old woman who is sometimes called a witch by the villagers. Murphy tells the story, not only of certain individuals, but also of a village, which is struggling to survive brutal Nazi rule and must deal with collaborators in its own ranks. The author, who did research for three years in preparation for the novel, does not flinch from describing the horrors of Nazi persecution. One crisis depicted in the novel involves the desperate measures the villagers must take to counter the Nazi project of removing all "perfect" children from the village. The Nazi plan was to kill all Polish old people and all children, except for the Aryan-appearing ones, then force the adult population to do slave labor before killing them also. In this compelling novel, the author brings an extraordinary historical period to life while telling a tale of the redemptive power of love.
