A childhood friendship haunts two young women living under Hitler's Third Reich--Hannah Kaufman, a Jewish prisoner, and Hilde Kramer-Bischoff, a fervent Nazi supporter--in Jennifer Coburn's heart-wrenching The Girls of the Glimmer Factory. Coburn (Cradles of the Reich) again displays her commitment to research and includes grim descriptions of life in Theresienstadt, the camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia where the two protagonists reunite.
Hilde and Hannah were best friends in Munich, but in 1935, Hannah's family fled to Prague, "thinking they would be safe from Nazi rule." Told in chapters that alternate between their perspectives, the story begins in 1940, after Hannah's family has escaped again, to Palestine. But Hannah contracted smallpox and stayed behind with her grandfather; they planned to leave once she recovered. By 1941, Hannah is imprisoned in Theresienstadt, a Nazi "model camp" built to appease Red Cross inspectors and serve as a set for propaganda films in which starving enslaved laborers act as "thriving" Jews. In reality, Hannah and the other women are assigned to the "glimmer factory," where they slice mica into tiny slivers used as electrical insulation for Luftwaffe aircraft. Hilde, meanwhile, endures bad luck and bad choices, leading her to feel that "the only thing she cared about was the future Hitler promised" and to scrap for a place in the Nazi Party. In 1942, Hilde wins a role as a film production assistant assigned to record the "paradise settlement." As strong as Hilde is narcissistic, Hannah stealthily uses their shared history to subvert the sham films and reveal the horrors of Theresienstadt. The Girls of the Glimmer Factory is a gripping, thoroughly researched novel and a reminder of the dangers of a despotic dictator. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.