Skeletons at the Feast

When I first started reading Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian, I wondered why I was subjecting myself to another holocaust book. I almost put it aside several times – the stories of atrocities committed by the Nazis and Russians were unbearably graphic and horrible. But what saves this book are the richly developed characters: 18-year-old Anna Emmerich and her family, Prussian aristocrats fleeing in advance of the invading Russians in the waning weeks of the war; Uri, a Jew who had jumped from a boxcar delivering Jewish prisoners to the camps, and who survived as a chameleon, taking on the uniforms and identities of dead Wehrmacht soldiers, some of whom he had killed himself; Callum, the Scottish prisoner of war who is loaned to the Emmerichs to help with the harvest, and who stays with them after their Polish servants had fled; and Cecile, a young French woman on a Nazi-driven death march.

Through these characters, Bohjalian does a great job of portraying the end of the war through a variety of lenses, not only the Jewish victims, but also Germans who had buried their heads in the sand as the Nazis annihilated millions, but who were fearful of what would happen to them when the war is over. He also embeds a love story between Anna and Callum, a risky venture because of its potential to trivialize the horror of the war. But their love story transcends this, not because it is “true love” but because it is true and full of conflict.

Bojhalian tells a story of love and humanity amidst the horror. Had he not shown the brutality of the war, this story could have become trite, but it does not. Instead it is thoughtful and eminently worthwhile.