Hansi: The Girl Who Loved the Swastika by Maria Anne Hirschmann

This is the true story of Maria Anne who as a young Chechoslovakian teenager in 1940 won a scholarship to a Nazi school in Prague.  Maria Anne's mother died when she was very young and her father gave her away to another family to raise but would never give them permission to adopt her yet had nothing to do with her.  This made her foster father never quite accept her as one of his own, though her foster mother loved her deeply and treated her with love and taught her how to pray and love God.  However, Maria Anne always felt the deep rejection of her foster father and her real father and therefore when the chance to get away from the home life and poverty she knew through the scholarship she jumped at the chance.  She was thrilled that she could have an education for free and was honored to have passed the tests and been chosen out of all the participants.  At fourteen, as her train pulled away, her tearful foster mother's words "Don't ever forget Jesus" went with her.  But once at the school Maria Anne went on a years long journey of learning atheism and blind devotion to Hitler and the Nazi system. Through years of war and hardship she vehemently stuck up for what she thought was a better Germany coming.   When she finally came to have her eyes opened to what Hitler and his regime had actually done and the cowardice of Hitler's suicide, totally disillusioned,  she made a frightening escape across the Communist border into West Germany and into a renewal with her relationship with Jesus.  After being treated kindly by the American soldiers after her escape, Maria Anne always had a desire to move to America .  Eventually the opportunity presented itself and she and her family moved to New York.  But things were not as they had imagined it to be at first and they were overwhelmed with their own poverty trying to establish themselves and with their observance of careless affluence of others in America.  But as they worked to find their footing in this new land with all it's new customs and ways the one thing they took to heart was the freedom they had to make of themselves what they dreamed and the freedom to talk about and teach their deepest Christian convictions.

This was an old book from the '70's that I picked up some years ago.  I thought it sounded like an interesting story and I wondered at the author's perception of being right inside the Nazi youth.  Her life makes quite the story in everything she saw and experienced as she was immersed and deceived  into the culture of the Nazi's reign.  What really spoke to me in the story was how this family has taken their freedom here in America and truly appreciate it and revel in it.  The wonder that they have in being able to share their faith is fresh and inspirational.  Coming from freedom my whole life sometimes I feel I slip into an almost apathetic place in truly realizing what I have.  But this book really made me more aware of that.  It was also very interesting reading someone's story who had been right smack in the middle of Europe during World War II getting caught up in Hitler's Germany.  It was a great testament to God's forgiving power and ability to totally change a life.

Book challenge goals met:  a memoir, a book by a female author, a non-fiction, a book set in another country, a book based on a true story, a book at the bottom of your to read list

Will also be linked to Semicolon Saturday Review of Books