Book Review: THE OPPERMANNS by Lion Feuchtwanger

The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"One man may ask: ‘Is this thing safe?’ The second: ‘Is it right?’ Their queries show us in one phrase, which free man is, which a slave."

It was in Anne Frank's diary that I first encountered the horror of reading about liberties taken for granted, taken away bit by bit. The slow dehumanization of an entire people is not the work of one man, nor accomplished in one day. I remember being so appalled as a fourth grader, I couldn't stand it, I had to talk about it with all my classmates, who accused me of making it up. Such was the horror of childhood innocence in the face of such evil.

This fresh horror was renewed when I read The Oppermanns, written in real-time by one who was actually subjected to this furious hate, but was lucky enough to live to tell his tale.

The Oppermanns is a family story. Growing up in comfort, in a civilization they were proud to count themselves members of, they were slow to acknowledge the signs when they first began, until the small became a tidal wall of unstoppable violence that swept an entire continent into a world war.

It was the mistake of overly civilized folk to think that "the Nationalist movement merely stood for a brutal agitation, stirred up by military and feudal elements who hoped to derive a profit from the low instincts of the small citizen."

What makes this book a horror is how contemporary it sounds. How obvious the rise of barbarism is in these unkind times.

The most heartbreaking story within was, for me, about the Jewish school boy who was unjustly persecuted by a Nazi teacher, and how ineffective the school headmaster was to counter such blind fanatic hatred, passing itself off as nationalistic virtue.

It hits close to home, when there are those who also try to spread fear based on lies around. Feuchtwanger ominously warns that "lies and violence went hand in hand."

Feuchtwanger wrote this as a warning to the rest of the world, of how easy it was for such a great country of poets and musicians, of elevated consciousness, to be taken over by the illiterate thug who, "due to an inferiority complex, had encased himself in an armor of the cheapest nationalism, through which not a ray of common sense could penetrate."

And yet, for all the fire breathing, there is amazingly still hope that man is better than the beast within.

Over and over, so often I've lost count, the quote appears in the book: "It is upon us to begin the work. It is not upon us to complete it.”

This is an important book, especially in 2023, and deserves wider readership.

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