I gave up to believe in a naive romanticism, but some stories can't keep me indifferent. Especially when something happened in real life, and not the fruit of the imagination of a crazy artist. Aimée & Jaguar is a book like this. Many people know the movie from 1999 by Max Färderböck. But it was based on the Austrian female writer book, Erica Fischer.
It shows the love story of two women who met in Nazi Berlin a bit earlier than concentration camp era but very close to it. I got this book in Russia. It was poorly printed and translated, but the strength of these pages broke all the wrong impression. And first of all, I paid attention not only to a lesbian love story but the picture of the city occupied by Nazis. How slowly, but confidently they won their way of life and subordinated the thoughts of ordinary citizens. How Jews couldn't be doctors anymore and had to close all their shops, how Jewish kids couldn't attend the school with Germans, who jews had separated places in trams and then were not allowed to use public transport at all. And among this crazy life, a strange love made its way.
What can be more absurd than the love between a Nazi officer's wife with four kids (Lilly Wust) and the young Jewish woman (Felice Schragenheim) involved in underground resistance movement? And it happened, and turn into great love. When I was reading a book, that was mainly based on diaries and memories of the German woman, and I thought that she is a mother of kids was in love for the first time in her life.
Of course, the book had a very dramatic end, and Lilly spent almost all her life trying to find her lost lover. In contrast, some of her kids moved to Isreal to be close to this culture and people, remembering the tragic love story of their mother.
I would recommend this book to everyone who likes to read memoirs and beautiful and tragic stories that life brings us. Unfortunately, no tale is catchy when it doesn't have any changes from good to sad and back and so endlessly...
Source of the photos: https://goo.gl/images/RDV73r and https://goo.gl/images/tqoFKu