The Woman Outside the Walls
2016, London. Ninety-year-old Anna leaves her house and walks towards the bus stop, holding a small suitcase. She wishes to escape, fearful the police might be coming for her. In the evening, her neighbor’s son, Freddie, finds her sitting on the bus stop bench, shivering, and mumbling in German. He helps to bring Anna home.
1942, Hamburg. Seventeen-year-old Anna meets and falls in love with a German soldier. He goes off to the war, leaving pregnant Anna behind. Hiding from her parents, Anna delivers in a maternity home, and the baby is adopted. She works as a secretary in a prison in eastern Germany. Upon observing the prisoners’ treatments, Anna learns it’s not an ordinary jail. When the Russian Army approaches, she escapes back to bombed-out Hamburg and survives, living with other ladies of the night. Although helped by a kind British soldier, Anna lives in fear of retribution from the authorities.
Suzanne Goldring mentions that she came upon the idea for this story upon hearing of the case of Irmgard Furchner, a 96-year-old former concentration camp secretary who ran out of her nursing home! While the novel is entirely fictional, the inclusion of some real-life characters, such as the Nazi official Ribbentrop befriending Anna, and his arrest, adds realism. However, Goldring purposefully doesn’t identify the prison where Anna worked. Goldring’s extensive research transports us to WWII Germany. This is an unusual novel, written mainly from the German viewpoint. The atrocities at the concentration camp, the Allies’ bombing of the cities, and the dreadful living conditions afterward are presented in a neutral narrative. Readers are encouraged to make their own decisions, particularly about whether everyone who worked in concentration camps should be punished for war crimes.
