Havurah Shalom

Primo Levi called it “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis."

Based on a true story, this sweeping saga tells the tale of a working class couple in Berlin who decide to take a stand against the Nazis. Berlin in 1940 was a city filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France.

Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels' necks.

More than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, it is a deeply moving story of two people who stand up for what’s right, and for each other. Written soon after the end of World War II after the authors’ release from a Nazi insane asylum.

Discussion led by David Newman in Zoom Room Bet.