The Evil That Surrounds Us: The WWII Memoir of Erna Becker-Kohen

By Kevin P. Spicer and Esther-Maria Nagele

In 1931, Gustav Becker and Erna Kohen married. He was Catholic and she was Jewish. Erna and Gustav had no idea their religious affiliations, which mattered so little to them, would define their marriage under the Nazis. As one of the more than 20,000 German Jews married to an "Aryan" spouse, Erna was initially exempt from the most radical anti-Jewish measures. However, even after Erna willingly converted to Catholicism, the persecution, isolation, and hatred leveled against them by the Nazi regime and their Christian neighbors intensified, and she and their son Silvan were forced to flee alone into the mountains. Through intimate and insightful diary entries, Erna tells her own compelling and horrifying story and reflects on the fortunate escapes and terrible tragedies of her friends and family. The Nazis would exact steep payment for Erna's survival: her home, her family, and ultimately her faithful husband's life. The Evil That Surrounds Us reveals both the great evil of Nazi Germany and the powerful love and courage of her husband, friends, and strangers who risked everything to protect her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9780253029904

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Reviews for The Evil That Surrounds Us

[Eric Vought · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The memoir itself is an intriguing glimpse into the fortunes and misfortunes of straddling lines in the Third Reich's Germany, the writer having been a woman of Jewish descent converted to Catholicism married to an Aryan Catholic, thus, on the surface at least, in a semi-protected status through much of the War.

The often terse everyday narratives of trying to raise a child, get groceries, stay out of prison, find somewhere to stay while traveling to a sick relative, of interacting with neighbors, of watching her Jewish relations slowly disappear, of those 'Christians' who helped her family in distress-- and those who did not-- of the ebb and flow of her faith, are compelling. The book is not long, but nor is it short on detail. An introduction by the editor puts the memoir in context and connects details not available to the author when the events unfolded. Some photos are also included as color plates.

The *E-book*, however, is problematic. Through some quirk of formatting or conversion, the file is HUGE and terribly slow to load, read, or page, even on different devices that handle much longer documents with ease. The reading experience is at times painful, even after downloading for offline use, as I have often had to wait minutes for a page flip, getting worse further into the book.