The Righteous
In 1943, Western allies either did not know, did not want to know, or did not believe that Adolf Hitler was killing every European of Jewish ancestry. The Righteous follows two former college friends as they discover and combat the genocide.
Balson exposes the ignorance and prejudices of many Americans to the unfolding extermination and how a courageous few discover and combat the horror. Julie and Theresa serve as everyday observers of the ignorance and inertia on both sides of the Atlantic. They prowl the intersections of American government departmental conflicts and coverups, international diplomacy and relief, and the resistance inside the Budapest Jewish community as fellow Jews disappear from the Hungarian countryside enroute to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Along the way they meet and assist many historic heroes.
Such a serious topic merits Balson’s somber approach; however, speeches masquerading as dialogue, background data dumps, and repetition bogs down the narrative’s pace. For example, the statistic that 12,000 Jews a day were being shipped north is repeated a dozen times—often in conversations among the same people. Likewise, Ira Hirschmann’s previous rescue of Jews from Hungary is belabored. Many “as you know, Bob” conversations repeat known data. In 1943, regular telephone calls from Budapest to Bern, Switzerland and Stockholm, let alone Washington, DC, would not have been so easy.
The book brings the past to life through the eyes of sympathetic participants employing excellent history with an overlay of fiction.
