A Child's Tapestry of War Review

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A Child's Tapestry of War ReviewThis book is a delightful view of WWII Denmark from the eyes of a child.
We learn of heroics by Anne's mother, who "scares away" a German soldier in the absence of the husband (father). We learn of parents' efforts to give Anne a normal childhood despite the rationing and travel restrictions.
We learn an amazing tale of rescue from the concentration camps!
This must be one of the better novels coming out of the World War II experience being told by adult children of the war.
5 stars for good story telling; interesting, unique anecdotes; historical perspective amid real life unfolding of the war in Denmark and Europe; and the tenacity of the author to have the story told.A Child's Tapestry of War OverviewAnne Ipsen's memoir of her Danish childhood is bathed in the light of long summer evenings and the love of doting parents.But the evocative, artful strands that weave this story are interlaced with the menace and cruelty of the Nazi occupation of Denmark during World War II.This chronicle of a childhood in Denmark spins homey images: a mother who implores Anne to pick flowers with long stems, but gives her a little egg cup for the tiny bouquet she presents; Far, her father the doctor, boosting her up the hills on a nine-mile bicycle trek to their weekend retreat; the two best friends whose rag dolls "canoe inside the radiators betweenapartments" after the girls are asleep.But for Anne, the ages from five to ten are overlaid with another kind of impression as German troops settle into an increasingly resisted occupation of Denmark during the Second World War:My memories are vivid images like those of a medieval tapestry, woven from the fine threads of everyday life.They are filled with the colorful mille fleurs from a happy childhood and a white unicorn of fantasy encircled by family, but with an ominous backdrop of hunters in green-German soldiers.This weaving of images creates a childhood in which normalcy is cherished and nurtured, but cannot be ensured.Before the war, Anne's mother-Mor-spies a red kerosene lamp in a store, brings it home and declares, "I want a house to go with this lamp."The resulting cabin provides a respite from city life complete with books read aloud by the fireplace, a strawberry patch and forget-me-nots by a hidden stream.But even this idyllic sanctuary can't shut out the war:Mor took a little notebook and a pencil and went outside. She knew how to handle these intruders, taking advantage of their respect for authority."Get off my land," she said in German."This is private property.I want your name, rank and the name of your commanding officer in order to lodge a complaint."The Germans leave the Ipsen's land. But they didn't leave everyone alone.Cousin Clara, in her eighties and half-Jewish, is sent to a concentration camp, and put in charge of a gasoline pump.Yet she survives the war, with most of the otherfive hundred Danish Jews arrested by the Nazis.About seven thousand Jews-with the help of the Danish Underground-escaped from Denmark to Sweden.The images created in a country under siege bear testament to the ingenuity of Danish resistance: King Christian X, followed byall Danes, displaying a yellow star on his coat in solidarity with the Jews so marked by the Germans; Anne's piano teacher and her husband who keep records of collaborators for the Underground and move their family nightly; a general strike that paralyzes the country until the Nazis cancel the early curfew they had imposed. Within a life already rich in characters and traditions, Anne's childhood expands to glimpse a world rocked by the savagery of war, whether a school accidentally destroyed by bombs or her father's personal account of a humanitarian mission to assist concentration camp survivors-"Five hundred years ago Hieronymus Bosch described horror scenes of genderless human bodies on the way to hell.There in Padborg stood such a line. . . ."Europe is in shambles.Denmark is occupied by the German army.Yet life goes on, in a book of childhood discovery, exquisite images, and extraordinary and ordinary occurrences:Someone turned on the radio because Churchill was to speak.Everyone rushed into the living room to hear him, leaving Oldemor [Anne's eighty-eight-year old great-grandmother] sitting alone at the table.Over Churchill's dramatic voice, finally announcing the German surrender, Oldemor was heard to complain,"Why are you all leaving?Don't you want a piece of my birthday cake?"

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