FEATURED BOOK

Night

by Elie Wiesel

This was a powerful first-hand account of the horrors of the Holocaust and one boy’s challenges of not only surviving but fighting to remain at his father’s side.

Elie was 15 when he and his family were forced to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau, then immediately separated from his mother and sisters and their fate unknown until years later. Many times we read World War II novels with assumptions of how bad the concentration camps were…but this book, first written in French then translated to English afterward, shares the raw, real details of surviving such an ordeal.

There were so many poignant points that reached into my soul and tore at my heart. Little statements like when mud covered his new shoes and saved them from being stolen from him, Elie prayed gratefully that God made mud…how many of us have prayed in gratitude for mud? Or early on in captivity when he questioned with judgment the way sons turned on their fathers or brothers against brothers, then after a year of starvation and torture, feeling those same desires to survive at any cost and how a crust of bread, even moldy or dry, was like a nugget of gold to the bearer.

This book affected me deeply and if you haven’t read it, I highly encourage you to.

Historical Fiction Update

Berlin wall Memorial-

“To date, however, there is no exact number of fatalities at the inner-German border. The current state of research and the sources suggest that at least 260 victims can be assumed here. A scientific study by the Free University of Berlin has determined the number of 327 victims. This study and the categorization on which it is based are controversial. The Berlin Wall Foundation assumes a total of around 650 victims of the border regime as an approximation. This number also includes the people who died in the Baltic Sea.” (Berlin Wall Memorial)

It has been well over a year since I shared a biography of a victim from the Berlin Wall. In Ensnare, one of the escape attempts Ella considers to participate in is running the border in a van through the checkpoint and to keep driving until they reach West Berlin. Sadly, this was attempted several times in real life with tragic results.

On the night of April 17, 1962, Klaus Brueske drove a truck carrying two of his friends through the checkpoint at the Heinrich-Heine-Strasse border. Amid a hail of bullets, 14 to be exact, they made it to the West, only 23 year-old Brueske died en route. The Neues Deutschland newspaper reported the act like many other times as the escapees as the criminals “violently breaking the border” and “placed the lives of members of the border security organ in extreme danger.”

On the day of the planned event, Klaus arranged to borrow a truck from his work and weighed it down with sand and gravel in order to make it strong enough to breach the checkpoint. Initially seven young men had planned to escape but when they met that night in a pub, they spent the last of their East German Marks on alcohol and came under questioning by the DDR police. To avoid suspicion, they decided to separate and meet at the truck at a later appointed time, though only three showed up.

After midnight, Klaus and his two friends drove the truck through the first and second checkpoints reaching a speed of 70 mph when the guards open fired on them. The vehicle didn’t stop until it ran into a barrier on the West side. Although Klaus had been shot twice in the back of the neck, his death did not come directly from those injuries. After being shot, he lost control of the truck and when it hit the barrier, the sand in the back of the truck filled the cab and suffocated him. His two friends only suffered minor injuries and honored Klaus for their freedom.

Due to the partial success of this plan, the East German authorities immediately redesigned the checkpoints, further fortifying the path, and began an extensive investigation into the three young men’s families and friends which led to searches, interrogation, and detainment.

After the reunification of Germany in 1990, efforts were made to bring the shooters to justice, only it was difficult to prove if the shooter acted on his own or was commanded to shoot. The border guard who fired the shots that led to Klaus Brueske’s death was arrested in April 1994 and received a sentence of probation for one year and two months.

TRAVEL ADVENTURE OF THE MONTH

Two Guns Ghost Town (near Flagstaff AZ)

One of the most amazing features of this particular area as you drive East out of Flagstaff is that it appears fairly flat all around you but there are hundreds of crevices to canyons, deep in the ground, which offer a touch of mystery such as waterfalls and caves.

There is a legend at Two Guns that the Apache Indians had kidnapped some Navajos and took refuge in a cave that was found in such a canyon. The cave was known to be large enough to hold over 40 people and their horses.

The Navajos discovered them and out of revenge built a brush fire and closed off the mouth of the cave killing everyone inside giving it the name of “Death Cave”.

Over the years, there has been some settlement here and there but the most interesting settler was Harry E. Miller in 1925 who proceeded to build a zoo near the canyon. He housed mountain lions, cougars, Gila monsters, snakes, and even a lynx. He opened a restaurant and a gift shop and one of his intrigues was selling the skeletal bones and the skulls of the dead Apaches from the Death Cave. In addition to all this, he built fake Native American ruins inside the cave and charged people entrance fees to view them, trying to pass them off as authentic.

Remains of the zoo, including damaged cages, several structures, and the cave with the Indian ruins are still accessible to see, although a cave-in a few years ago makes it so you can’t go as deep in the cave as before.

*Monthly Giveaway!

Next giveaway will be in January’s newsletter.

Thank you for following my writing journey.

#leahmoyes