Madeline
There are two types of WW2 historical fiction novels, the ones that follow a similar same story and those that do not. Lilac Girls is the later. It is the story that combines three stories around some of the crimes against humanity that came out during the Nuremberg Trials, the trials against the Nazis from the medical experiments on their prisoners.
Premise of Lilac Girls
The story revolves around three women, the first is a well off women in the country of New York, Caroline, the second is a Polish women, Kasia, and the third is a German surgeon, Hurta.From the cover of the book of three women walking down the street arm in arm, it is assumed that these three stories not only come together but they become the best of friends in the end. This is not the case.
The stories start to weave together when Kasia finds herself in a Nazi prison camp where Hurta has been hired to work there as a doctor. Although Hurta is not proud of or even wants to be doing this work, it has been made clear that she has no choice. Ultimately, she is forced to work on some of the girl’s legs to simulate some of the issues Nazi soldiers experienced in the field. One of the legs she worked on belonged to Hurta.
Why Rabbits? Why Lilac Girls?
These are the two names these women have been given. The Rabbits are for two reasons, the way they hopped around the camp after the surgeries and also because they were treated like lab rabbits. The name Lilac Girls is almost never used in this book and does not come out until the end, when Caroline brought the women to the United States to get the best medical care possible. They were then labeled Caroline’s Lilac Girls.
More On The Nuremberg Trials
This is not the first time I have started a blog, one of the first things I wrote about in a past blog was The Nuremberg Trials. In preparing to write that post, I read the Nuremberg files which are easily found online. They are easy to read in terms of difficulty but they are hard to read as far as content. There are details about these crimes against humanity that are spelled out in great detail.
Final Thoughts
The Lilac Girls tells the truth about The Rabbits during WW2. What I appreciate is the added story of Hurta, which describes what it was like to be forced to implement these operations. Although there are many historical fiction books about WW2, none I have read have mentioned The Rabbits or focused on the crimes against humanity that the Nazis did in the camps.
