I always enjoy reading Naomi Ragen's books as they show me what life is like in a different culture. The Enemy Beside Me is based on a true story. Milia Gottstein is married to a surgeon and they live outside of Tel Aviv. Malia is a 3dr generation Nazi hunter and spends her life tracking down Nazi criminals all over the world. Dr. Darius Vidas is a Lithuanian professor who is trying to bring understanding as to Lithuania's role in the atrocities of world war 2 and his families actions. Milia responds to an invitation to a symposium in Lithuania.
I really enjoyed the history I learned in this book. Prior to reading The Enemy beside me I had never read anything about Lithuania. The interactions between Milia and Darius were interesting and I loved how they learned from each other. I found the descriptions of the countryside breathtaking. This novel is well worth reading. One caution...there is some use of profanity and some adult situations.
So brew a pot of tea and curl up for a fascinating read.
I was given a copy of this book with no expectations. All thoughts are my own.
From Amazon:
Inspired by true events, Naomi Ragen's The Enemy Beside Me is a powerful, provocative novel about two people fighting for reconciliation over unforgivable crimes of the past.
Taking over from her father and grandfather as the head of the Survivor’s Campaign, an organization whose purpose is to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, Milia Gottstein has dedicated her life to making sure the voices of Holocaust victims will never be silenced. It is an overwhelming and heartbreaking mission that has often usurped her time and energy being a wife to busy surgeon Julius, and a mother and grandmother. But now, just as she is finally ready to pass on her work to others, making time for her personal life, an unexpected phone call suddenly explodes all she thought she knew about her present and her future.
In the midst of this personal turmoil, Milia receives an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a Holocaust conference in Lithuania from Dr. Darius Vidas, the free spirited, rebellious conference head. Despite suspecting his motives—she is, after all, viewed as a ‘public enemy’ in that country for her efforts to have them try war criminals and admit their historic responsibility for annihilating almost their entire Jewish community, including her own family—she nevertheless accepts, having developed a secret agenda of her own. But as Milia and Darius begin their mission, shared experiences profoundly alter their relationship, replacing antagonism and suspicion with a growing intimacy. However, this only ramps up the hostile forces facing them, threatening their families, livelihoods, and reputations, and forcing them into shocking choices that will betray all they have achieved and all that has grown between them.
About the author:
I attended The Hebrew Institute of Long Island. I then decided that I wanted to be a writer. I got a B.A. from Brooklyn College, while simultaneously attending Sara Schneirer's Hebrew Teacher's Seminary in Boro Park. I loved God. I still do. But it wasn't so clear to me whether people who wore the black outfits and wigs were truly more pious, or just stuck in some social groove. I got a Master's Degree in Engish from Hebrew University in 1977. I only started writing novels when I was in my late thirties, after the birth of my fourth child.
