HAMLET’S CHILDREN
An important book is being published this month, and I’ve decided to use my blog to bring it to your attention.
It’s a novel by Richard Kluger titled Hamlet’s Children, published by Scarlet Tanager Books. The action is set in Denmark during the many days of its World War II Nazi occupation, as seen through the eyes of an American teenager, living with his deceased mother’s Danish relatives and coming of age as an alien marooned in a disconcerting new land throughout its long national nightmare.
I’ll talk more about the book shortly, but first let me introduce you to the author.
Full disclosure: Dick Kluger and I have enjoyed a long and warm friendship – beginning at Horace Mann School, continuing as roommates at Princeton, and thereafter staying in close touch during the next six-plus decades, even after he and his lovely wife Phyllis moved to California years ago.
After serving as editor-in-chief of the Horace Mann Record and chairman of The Daily Princetonian, Kluger held various significant posts in both journalism and the book industry, but his major impact has come from the fine books he has written. On the non-fiction side, he authored Simple Justice, a history of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending school segregation, a National Book Award finalist termed “a monumental achievement” by The Nation; then The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune, another National Book Award finalist that the Boston Globe called “probably the best book ever written about an American Newspaper”; and then Ashes to Ashes, focusing on the tobacco industry and the smoking/ health controversy, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, and was saluted by the Washington Post as “an awesome feat of reporting as history.”
Kluger has subsequently gone on to author another three generally well-received historical works. He has also written six novels, the most widely read of which were Members of the Tribe, a featured alternative selection of the Book-of-the-Month club, and The Sheriff of Nottingham, both anchored in historical events.
So, here’s a contemporary of mine still going strong at our advanced age, and Hamlet’s Children – probably the finest of all his novels – is positive proof. Now let me tell you a little about why I consider this novel to be not only an excellent read but an important book in today’s world.
Denmark was spared the savage treatment Nazi Germany dealt other countries it conquered and allowed to remain nominally self-governing during the war. Still, it couldn’t escape the toll the war took on its people’s collective soul. Fearful of lethal reprisals that might be provoked by openly resisting or secretly harassing the German occupation, Denmark made a complicit pact with its tormentors to feed and equip their armed forces. As a result, the Danes suffered from self-hatred at home and scorn among some of the Western Allies as a pack of spineless collaborators bartering their country’s honor to survive the war unbloodied. But, as Kluger demonstrates so acutely in Hamlet’s Children, that’s just too simplistic a view.*
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* By the way, there’s an excellent YouTube video about the making of the book’s cover, with a professional voiceover by our Horace Mann classmate Alan Sklar. Just click here to access it.
https://tinyurl.com/HamletsChildren
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This is the story of how Terry, a teenage American, assimilates with his Danish relatives and their friends as they attempt to subvert the Germans’ iron grip on their kingdom. And what becomes paramount in this agenda of defiance is the Danes’ persistent effort to keep their Jewish neighbors out of the Nazis’ murderous hands – a testament to the human spirit in its bleakest hours.
I’m not going to attempt outlining all the details of this saga, but instead will skip ahead to focus on the most interesting character in the book, Terry’s Aunt Rikki. As Terry put it upon meeting her for the first time, “I took to Rikki right away. She made me feel as if we were old friends.” Her charm, savvy and beauty dazzled him, and he freely confessed, “I loved her from the first”.
But Rikki’s positive features also caught the attention of Major Sigmund Holst, the newly arrived commandant of the local German occupation forces. You can see this beginning to happen at Major Holst’s first meeting with her family, as he tries to make the case that Danes should welcome their occupation. Listen to this byplay from the book:
Rikki stood now, interrupting Holst’s precisely phrased delivery. “Excuse me, Major, but please tell us why we or any other loyal Danes – whom you conquered in violation of the peace accord your government entered into with ours – should wish to assist your mission here?”
Holst’s face torqued with surprise but no anger. “Because, Fräulein Mundt, it will be to your advantage to do so, even as our occupation, which we prefer not to think of as a conquest, has served to render Denmark a favored nation among the states of Europe.”
“You mean among the states in Europe that you’ve brutally seized,” Rikki shot back . . . .
The German’s glasses flashed as he tilted his head back in recoil. “Ah, Fräulein Erika, I see you are a true patriot. Very admirable indeed.”
Major Holst is a complex individual – appearing to loathe the brutal and deranged Nazi mentality, but intent on fulfilling his patriotic duty as a loyal German. Along the way, he befriends Rikki with what (one might conclude) is transparent carnal interest.
Rikki in turn is aware that she can seize on his seductive advances to extract lenient treatment to benefit her family and the Danish community as a whole. As one prominent reviewer of the book has noted, Rikki’s “struggle to defy her country’s consequences while preserving her honor all but steals the show,” while another reviewer noted that “The depiction of the complex relationship between the narrator’s aunt and the German major is superb and worth a book of its own.”
The most dramatic moment in the book occurs when the German troops are ordered to round up all Danish Jews for deportation to death camps. Rikki appeals to Holst (now having been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel) for help that will hold the key to whether the plan of the Danes to rescue their Jewish countrymen can succeed. This leads to a vivid scene where members of the family are assembled to hear Rikki’s report on what’s happening. To give you a flavor of the moral conundrum involved here, I’m just going to quote most of the scene as Kluger wrote it:
….When Rikki returned from her second meeting of the day with Sigmund Holst, she was wearing a small smile, neither smug nor triumphant. Sliding into the dining room chair left for her between her parents, she took a swallow of the sherry Grandma served her, then a deep breath of recovery from her ordeal, and said, “I think we’ll be all right.”
In as few words as possible, Lieutenant Colonel Holst had summarized to her the final orders he had been given without hinting to what extent, if any, he had played a role in their framing. [Ricki then summarizes these in detail]
Torben threw up his arms elatedly. “So, our vehicles will have time to slip by between their slow-motion truck patrols. But doesn’t Holst know the Jews will avoid taking the trains?”
“Of course,” Rikki said, adding with scarcely concealed satisfaction, “which I suspect is why many of his men will be assigned to train watching.”
Torben let out a whoop of laughter and shook his head in wonderment. “You’re a miracle worker, sis. God bless.” He went to her with open arms and delivered a noisy kiss. The rest of us clapped and cheered, and I whistled the way I had learned to at Asbury Park High football games from what seemed a lifetime ago….
Only Louisa, our youngest family member, expressed caution over Rikki’s report. “How do we know this isn’t all a trap?” she asked. “Maybe Colonel Holst is under orders to tell Rikki his troops will hold back and let the Jews escape, but they’ll really be lying in wait to shoot them down the minute they cross the beach headed for the fishing boats.”
It was an unvarnished challenge to our dear aunt’s confidence that her keen German admirer would not betray her. Rikki was unoffended. “I wondered the same thing, to tell you the truth, sweetheart. Then Sigmund told me one other thing he didn’t have to – something Torb’s resistance colleagues can probably check easily enough in the morning. The German patrol boats have all been ordered off active duty along the sound. They’re coming in to shore to be repainted starting tomorrow.
Sorry I forgot to mention that.” She turned to Louisa. “Feel better?”
“If he’s telling you the truth about that as well . . .”
“I believe he is,” Rikki said. “We’ll soon see.”
Helga took her hand and said, “Well, it appears as if this man may be what you’ve told us he is, and as his occasional acts of kindness have suggested he is. Perhaps he’s a true Christian.”
Rikki’s lips tightened and her expression darkened. “I’m not sure I’d nominate him for sainthood quite yet. He’s attached one condition to letting us help the Jews get away from here.”
“Don’t tell us he wants to be paid off,” Torben said. “He doesn’t seem the type.”
“Paid off in a way, I’m afraid,” she said and looked down the table at us cousins. “I wonder if you kids would mind leaving for a few minutes; this is nothing you really need to hear.”
We looked at one another unhappily. “We’re not children anymore, Aunt Rikki,” Louisa said with her usual unblinking directness.
Rikki shut her eyes and pondered a moment. “No, I guess not,” she said. And then she revealed the price Holst had extracted from her. “He says he fears for my personal safety since I’m obviously involved with the arrangements for the refugees…. He says he doesn’t want me to get arrested or attacked by anti-Semites or caught in any crossfire while the escape is in progress.”
“And so?” Torben asked.
Holst had insisted that she vacate her cottage for a week starting the next night, when the Jewish roundup was to begin, and spend it sequestered in a secure, attractive cabin beside the pond at his commandeered villa. “He promises me my privacy and his protection while I’m up there.”
“And his company, too, I suppose?” Helga asked after a moment of sour silence.
Rikki cast her mother a sideways look. “Yes, he’s invited me to dine with him as well.”
“Every night, no doubt. How chivalrous of him.” Grandma turned openly bitter. “And did the noble officer pledge not to – what do they say? – take advantage of your situation?”
Rikki studied her place setting. “I didn’t ask him that, Mother.”
“Why not? Surely the circumstances must have invited your suspicion.”
“Because I believe he’s a gentleman.”
Helga’s eyes flashed. “Or is it because you understand exactly what’s expected of you?”
Rikki was in no mood to be scolded for her already degrading admission. “I can take care of myself, thank you, Mother.”
Helga, though, would no longer be put off by her daughter’s evasiveness. “Erika,” she asked, oblivious to who else was listening to them, “I’ve averted my eyes and held my tongue beyond endurance out of respect for your unsullied devotion to truth and honor – until now –”
“Mother, there are many lives at stake,” Rikki cut her off. “I hadn’t the time to bargain with him or flee to higher moral ground –”
“Erika, are you becoming this German’s mistress – supposedly as a heroic sacrifice?” Helga demanded, her lifelong restraint coming unlaced. “Or am I far too tardy in asking?”
I badly wanted to stuff my ears or hide under the carpet. Spellbound by their primal encounter, however, I did neither. It was of course the very question I had been longing to ask but was too fainthearted to put to her myself.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Rikki said in a low-toned last-ditch stand of dissimulation. “We’re friends of a sort, and under very difficult circumstances.”
“Be honest with me, child.”
“I do only what I have to do, Mama, so long as he continues to help us as he has –”
“But he does so only out of passion for you, which I gather is not wholly unrequited.”
“You may think what you like.”
Helga shot her a look of fury. “I don’t like it at all, as you must surely have known all along. And I suspect I speak for the entire family.”
None of us dared say a word; Grandma was the matriarch of the Mundts, rearing up in all her formidable majesty. Rikki, too, chose silence. “Do you reciprocate this man Holst’s feelings?” Helga demanded. “I suppose that might mitigate your behavior, even if it doesn’t begin to justify it. Such conduct by our daughter toward a sworn enemy of the Danish people is reprehensible!”
How I longed for the courage to speak up in defense of Rikki’s torment, even though I had to respect – and half shared, really – my grandmother’s spew of righteous indignation. Instead, I looked at Louisa, brave soul that she was, hoping she might speak up. But it was Sarah, a family member by marriage only but hardly a disinterested onlooker, who rallied to her sister-in-law’s aid.
“Erika’s only human, Helga, and she’s done so much for us all. Perhaps you’re being a bit harsh to her.”
“She didn’t have to fall in love with one of these swine – not for our sake.”
Rikki had now taken all the abuse she cared to. “He is a decent man in an impossible situation – that is all I can say. And now he may have risked his neck to do what I’ve asked of him. So yes, I admire him, but love is not a factor.”
She pushed herself away from the table, rose with her unhumbled head high, and took measured strides to the front door, not giving any of us a look back…. And then she left, all the family’s hopelessly tangled emotions trailing in her wake.
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Whew!! Well, you must be wondering whether it works. Do the Jews escape? And what happens after the war when Rikki has to stand trial on the charge of treason for sleeping with the enemy? . . . . Read the book!
Anyway, here’s a novel that, as one reviewer put it, “captures the day-to-day feel of wartime, the menace, the moral compromises, and the occasional heroism.” I’ll give Dick Kluger the last words on the subject, which I’m quoting from one of his press interviews:
“My story takes place in Denmark, but it’s intended to serve as a parable. What happened to the Danes can happen anywhere, anytime, especially if a society lets down its guard and fails to protect its liberty in the wishful belief that the world is populated largely by benign or benevolent people like themselves. The trusting Danes lost their freedoms, if not their lives or all their comforts, to a ferocious foreign power – and today’s Americans, if they similarly drop their vigil, are at risk of losing their democracy to domestic malcontents irrationally blaming their frustrations on anybody but themselves. My book’s underlying question is how can and should decent, kindhearted people confront and deter unreasoning, nihilist ruthlessness without abandoning civility and becoming monstrous themselves.”
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Hamlet’s Children went on sale August 15th and can be ordered at your favorite bookstore or online via Amazon or Barnes & Nobles.
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