The Past in Hiding

In 1943, two Gestapo officers in possession a deportation order arrived at the home of the Strauss family in Essen, Germany.

The family was given two hours to pack their belongings. Marianne, the eldest child, aged 20, managed to escape from the house while the officers were in the basement. She spent the rest of the war in hiding, never staying in one place for long, helped by the Bund, an underground organisation with members across Germany.

After the war, Marianne came to Britain, married and settled in Liverpool. Roseman, Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton, met her in 1989 at the request of a German contact who was compiling memories for an exhibition about wartime life in the Ruhr.

Later, in 1996, he met her again and, at the suggestion of Marianne’s son, agreed to write a chronicle of her life. Sadly, after only three interviews, she died, but Roseman decided to continue with the work.

He was greatly aided in his task by the discovery of a cache of Marianne’s wartime papers that she had kept in her house in Liverpool, but never discussed with anyone. Using this material, he was able to set up interviews with many of her surviving friends and helpers (by this time scattered across Europe and the Americas) and collect letters and diaries.

In this regard, the book is a remarkable piece of detective work: Roseman’s travels enabled him to corroborate or question the information in Marianne’s papers. Like any detective, however, he had to sift carefully through sometimes distorted reminiscences to reach the facts. In common with other historians, he found that, for some survivors of this most awful time, the past really is in hiding, that ‘truth’ can often become blurred by repeated recollection or consistent suppression, intentionally or otherwise.

The story of Marianne’s survival would of itself have made a fascinating addition to the literature of the Holocaust, but Roseman’s consideration of the nature of truth and reminiscence gives his book a deeper and more profound resonance.