Remote Sympathy

I cannot put into words how haunting this novel was. From the very first line, I was hooked. Chidgey managed to make the characters feel human. At moments I forgot that these were not real people and that I was reading a fictionalised version of history. Everything was so thought out and rich, I found myself thinking of this story and these people even when I wasn't actively reading this novel. The families, the sufferers, the ruthlessness of it all felt so real.

The way she weaves different characters and point of views is commendable. Not at one point did I feel confused or questioning why the shift in narration. Together, the different viewpoints come together to create a feeling of being watched. From every angle, this story is told, albeit from different perspectives, but everyone has something to say. And every opinion and viewpoint is just as horrifying as the last.

There is no shying away from the uncomfortable truths of history in this novel. Although we do not spend that much time in the camp, it hangs over every chapter of this novel as a dark reminder of what happened. The horrors and unthinkable crimes are brought up again and again with the stark contrast of Greta's world versus Weber's being a main theme throughout.

I am still struggling to fathom how a novel this remarkable and eerie exists. I haven't read anything like this before and I doubt I will again. I found myself unable to put it down, yet unexplainably so deeply invested that I didn't want it to end. This is one that will stay with me forever, that is a fact.

This book takes a slightly different angle on the Holocaust novel but I sometimes felt that there's an odd juxtaposition of tones: the plot of the 'Remote Sympathy' machine feels a bit like a jaunty con-man trope... except for the fact that it's set against the background of Buchenwald and involves a woman dying of cancer. The motive for Dr Weber's deception is desperation but the crazy machine motif felt jarring to me as it has almost a sort of Jules Verne air which just doesn't fit the overall feel of the novel.

I greatly enjoyed Chidgey's 'The Wish Child' but remember it as being tauter than this. It takes this story some time to get going with a little too much back-story. That said, there are some powerful symbolic images, especially the central one of how the taint and corruption of Buchenwald turns a wished for pregnancy into a cancerous tumour. There's also a slightly heavier-handed image of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' hollowed out and containing a bible which looks forward to the compromised hope with which the book ends.

I'm never the greatest fan of the pass-the-baton narrative style: here there are three narrators plus a chorus of voices and some of the sections are only a few pages long. While reading, I was disappointed that the testament of the SS officer felt too contrived and simplistic, so it's fascinating to read in the afterword that quotations are taken from an authentic record at a war-crimes tribunal at Dachau.

Notable, too, are the grotesque scenes of Nazi wives discussing their beautiful new houses at Buchenwald as if they were gushing in Homes & Gardens magazine. Some are more naive than others about exactly what is going on in the camp (a labour camp, not an extermination camp) or exactly who is responsible for the beautiful workmanship of jewellery that they proudly show off or the tailoring and textiles which they love to admire.

So a slightly uneven book for me which had some pacing issues and which didn't always hang together as organically as I'd have wished - but potent and serious, all the same.

A powerful and beautifully written story about how we try to excuse and justify our actions and how we can so easily bury our heads in the sand to what is happening just a short distance away from us.

The story has 4 narrators, Dr. Lenard Weber (who has Jewish ancestors) and we see his viewpoint from letters he writes to his daughter, Greta Hahn whose views we are shown in her imaginary diary, her husband Dietrich, we get his point of view from what seems to be a transcription of a recording and the people of Weimar and how they view what is happening. 

Dr. Weber talks, in letters, to his daughter about the machine he invented when he was younger called the Sympathetic Vitaliser, which he believes will cure cancer. Greta Hahn (who was brought up Catholic but had to renounce her faith in order to marry) and her Husband, who move from Munich to Buchenwald so that her husband can work at the nearby prison camp there as the camp administrator. The story follows their move to what seems to be an idyllic setting if it wasn't for the labor camp on the other side of the forest.

​I thought this book was really well written and you get to look at the perspective of high-powered Germans during WW2 and also the Dr who is not so lucky.
The descriptive writing in this book is absolutely fantastic. I was always taught that descriptive writing needed to show the reader the scene so that they could see it for themselves but the description in this book is so detailed that you actually feel like you are there. What I found remarkable about this book was the way that the writer has even made some of the Nazi characters likable and it is unusual that in a book we should see their point of view about what was going on and she beautifully links lives that are on different ends of the Nazi atrocities. 

​

​

​

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey is a heart wrenching historical tale that looks at the Holocaust in a different way.
The book alternates between four voices – the former camp commandant in 1954 looking backwards, his wife in the form of an imaginary diary, a Jewish doctor writing to his daughter in 1946 looking backwards and eye witness accounts from the local town. Together these voices piece together life at Buchenwald.
We witness the commandant making excuses for what he does, trying to justify what can never be justified. We see his wife as she has cancer looking backwards to her life in Munich and also discovering a forbidden faith in God. The doctor is looking for news of his wife and daughter in Theresienstadt as he operates his cancer curing machine. And the townspeople deny what is happening on their doorstep.
We observe the hope placed in a machine by the three lead characters. We also witness the terrible cruelty of man’s inhumanity to man. As well as starvation, disease and death, there are little comments revealing the attitude of the Nazis to the Jewish people.
It seems impossible that normal everyday life of raising a family could happen next to a death camp, but it did.
Remote Sympathy is uniquely constructed as the reader witnesses the Holocaust mainly from the viewpoint of the Nazis. This makes it even more horrifying (if that is possible) as the Nazis believe what they are doing is acceptable.
This is a powerful and horrifying read. It is a book that needs to be read in order to keep alive the memory of the six million innocents. It is truly shocking but we must tell their story.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.

Moving and addictive I raced through this heartbreaking Holocaust tale. Will definitely stay with you and worth a read. Would love to read more by this author

A beautifully written, devastating book. The author has skilfully represented various perspectives and woven them into each other majestically. A book about hope, loss, ignorance and the atrocities of WWI.

Having previously overdosed on WWII literature, I had little hope for Remote Sympathy. Turns out, it was one of my top reads of 2021. I need a book to be haunting and harrowing and it was all that, and more. Showcasing the ease of turning a blind eye to atrocities. How we can be so close to something but still so far removed. How we can show empathy for enemies and contempt for comrades. The desperation is captivating. I loved this book. Many thanks to #netgalley for a copy in exchange for my views.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Europe Editions, and the author Catherine Chidgey.
My reaction when finishing this book was just 'wow'. What an ending!
This was an incredibly written story, with involving characters and a fascinating plot line. The story of life at Buchenwald camp told through different perspectives, also jumping between the past, present, and future.
It highlights the evils of obliviousness and how everything, even facts, truth, and morals, is relative, an incredibly powerful and moving experience.
If you are fan of this type of literature, focused on one of the darkest chapters in human history, I would really recommend this book. 5 stars without a doubt.

An excellent read by Catherine Chidgey, drawing similarities to ‘ A Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. by John Boyne. Transferred from Munich to his newly appointed post of Camp Administrator SS Sturmbannfuhrer Dietrich Hahn and his family Frau Greta Hahn and son Karl- Heinz arrive at a beautiful home skirting the edge of Buchenwald concentration camp. Despite our knowledge of the horrors taking place at the edge of their community, they appear to be living in luxury and as Greta discovers from her neighbour Emmi Wolfe whatever they wish for can be granted. Whether that be new furnishings, furniture, jewellery, latest fashions and even good health can be supplied by the prisoners. As the storyline develops their life seems to be a mirror reflection of that of the prisoners, they too are captive to the regime, though definitely a different scale. As the end of the war comes to it’s inevitable conclusion, chaos reigns.

A different perspective on the life surrounding and within the concentration camps, distressing at times to read but I found it interesting. Would make a good movie.

Thanks to Netgalley the author and publishers Europa Editions for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Moving and very poignant account of people connected with the labour camp of Buchenwald: Nazis, prisoners and local inhabitants and their different perspectives and experiences. Fictional but based on historical research.

I have read a lot of novels set in World War II but this one felt different. It flits between the point of view of a half Jewish doctor, Lenard Weber, who before the war had developed a device he hoped would cure cancer, SS Sturmbannfuhrer Dietrich Hahn and his wife, Greta. Greta develops cancer whilst Lenard is held in the camp overseen by her husband, who, by chance, has heard about Lenard's machine, and contrives to bring him and a version of his 'miracle machine' to his home to see if it will help his wife.

The story is told in sections in first person from the point of view of Lenard, Dietrich, Greta and the people of Weimar. Lenard's part takes the form of letters to his daughter, Lotte. Dietrich Hahn plays on the fact that Lenard is unaware of what befell his wife and daughter once they were sent to Theresienstadt and uses scraps of information about them to keep him coming back to treat his wife. Greta seems to choose to be unaware of what goes on up at the camp - I can't believe she didn't know the atrocities taking place so close to home and feel if was a conscious decision to ignore them in order to maintain the type of life she was used to before the war. I did warm to her part of the tale as her condition worsened and her renounced Catholicism was brought more to the fore, along with her time spent with Lenard.

I REALLY didn't like Dietrich, but guess that is the point, and could not get my head around the way he justified a lot of his decisions to make it seem like he didn't know their true impact on the prisoners. As for his growing collection of gold...

The depiction of camp life was suitably horrific, justifiably so, but I was really interested to find at the end of the book that much of it was based on real people and events, with post-war trial detail being taken directly from the American Military Tribunal in 1947.

A different, great, if harrowing, account of life in Buchenwald.

This is a powerful book - but be warned, it will really tug your heart strings.

It is told from three points of view - Lenard Weber is a prisoner in Buchnwald 'work camp'; a former doctor, he invented a machine - a Sympathetic Vitaliser - to destroy cancerous tumours; Greta Hahn moves to the edge of the camp with her husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, and discovers the power of being the wife of such a man; Dietrich Hahn himself, camp administrator and some sections explaining what the inhabitants of Weimar, felt and thought about the camp on their doorstep.

They tell the tale in three ways - Weber is writing to his daughter Lotte; Greta is writing an 'imaginary diary' (which was the one thing I found a bit hard to swallow) and Dietrich is talking to his interrogators after the war about what went on in the camp.

The story is told in a matter of fact fashion, without trying to shock. But shock it does, repeatedly. There are shades of '1984' when the administrators try to find inventive ways to save money, which always seem to result in a harder life for the prisoners.

Perhaps the most shocking part was when the camp was liberated and the local people were apparently forced to go around the camp and see what had been happening under their noses. Their ability to refuse to accept what was before their eyes was astounding. However, this was echoed during the book by Greta and Dietrich's belief that the prisoners were always being treated well.

A powerful story, well told. Thank you to NetGalley and Europa Editions for allowing me access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When Doktor Lenard Weber meets his wife, Anna, in 1930, he is studying medicine and is engaged in inventing a machine to help cure cancer. His Sympathetic Vitaliser uses ‘remote sympathy,’ the idea that power produced in one part of the body can be used to influence another. However, with the rise of the Nazi Party, Herr Weber is asked to ‘resolve,’ his domestic situation, in order to continue his work, as Anna is Jewish. Both Lenard and Anna decide to divorce for show and Anna, with his little daughter, Lotte, move out.

The novel then shifts focus, as we learn of a young couple, Dietrich and Greta Hahn, moving with their young son, Karl-Heinz, to Buchenwald, where Dietrich is take-up a new position in the camp there. Greta is younger than her husband, exceptionally naïve and unable to grasp the new surroundings she finds herself in. When she becomes ill, Dietrich casts around for a cure and comes to hear of the Sympathetic Vitaliser, resulting in Weber’s swift removal to Buchenwald, where he is told to cure Greta. Although he uses this situation to try to discover where, and how, Anna and Lotte are, the power is obviously all in Dietrich’s hands.

This is an intensely moving and poignant novel, about denial, grief, love, loss, and hope. The author even uses the population of the local town, as an extra viewpoint, who are happy to turn a blind eye to what is going on so close to them; while Anna blithely accepts the help of domestic Josef, without wishing to question why, exactly, he is there. With the prison compound literally within walking distance of her door, she is more concerned with what her young son may see, than with what her husband is doing. It is testament to Chidgey’s writing, that she manages to create such sympathetic characters – from bored, Nazi housewives, flirting with danger and disgrace, to officers turning to drink and gambling to blot out the reality of their work; even as they try to excuse their actions to themselves and those around them.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

I need to begin this review by saying how much I loved this book. It's beautiful but devastating.
We are introduced to Doktor Lenard Weber from a letter written to his daughter Lotte in 1946. He describes meeting his wife, and inventing a machine called a Sympathetic Vitaliser, which he hopes will prove a cure for cancer.
Unfortunately for Doktor Weber, his wife is a Jew, and this being Nazi Germany, his life changes in earth shattering ways.
His life and that of his machine come to the attention of Dietrich Hahn, SS Sturmbanfuhrer, whose wife Greta has cancer. Sent to run Buchenwald from Munich, Hahn arranges for Weber to be sent to Buchenwald to treat his ailing wife with the machine, hoping to cure her so that they can be the perfect Aryan family. The villa is perfect, the scenery beautiful, the villagers complacent.....

We hear from the recorded testimony of Hahn, as well as the invented diaries of his wife,and a series of letters from Weber about the contradictions and the horror of Buchenwald, and how this incomprehensible ideology affected the lives of so many. How a minor flaw in a fabric design, in a pair of beautifully made curtains by skilled craftsmen, noticed by a small child, could lead to a death sentence.
I don't want to say too much about it, because there is so much (in fact, too much) to say, but the contradictions and the dilemmas and the acts of cruelty are evident in this passage:

"All prisoners were fed a decent diet - no rotten potatoes, no soup made from turnip greens, no meat from sick or condemned animals. And I did not neglect our zoo creatures either, mashed potatoes with milk for the monkeys, honey and jam for the bears. It gave me great pleasure to pass by the enclosures and see them looking so healthy, so sleek".

This is a powerful, incredibly well researched novel and I am grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for my prepublished copy in return for an honest review.

A fascinating and unusual approach to telling the story of Buchenwald Camp during the latter part of WW2, this was not an easy book to read. The story is told from the ‘voices’ of the main characters- an SS senior officer in charge of camp administration, his young wife, a Jewish doctor who is a prisoner in the camp, and, similar to the chorus in a Greek tragedy, the people of the local town of Weimar. Beautifully written, great attention to detail and place, well rounded characters, heartbreaking, horrifying, but some redemption at the end. What struck me most was the way in which everyone in the book is in denial about the reality and horror of the camp, and what is happening there. And how easily ‘normal’ citizens can become so desensitised and corrupt and duped by the whole flawed ideology of the Nazi machine. Really makes you think, what would I have done? Definitely recommend this book, but like me you may find it harrowing and unsettling, all the more because it’s so well researched and based on real events.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance Kindle copy.

Remote Sympathy is a uniquely told WWII historical fiction novel, mainly set in Buchenwold concentration camp.
The story is told through 4 voices in alternating chapters. Dr Weber, designer of the Sympathetic Vitaliser - a machine he hopes is a cure for cancer. SS Hahn, a senior SS officer from Buchenwold. Greta Hahn, his wife. And finally the villagers from around Buchenwold.
Despite the story being told from so many points of view it isn’t confusing at all and is easy to keep track of.
Dr Webers story, both his back story, his will to make his machine work and his awful ordeal under the Nazi regime and in the concentration camp is incredibly moving along with his “ending” after release too.
Greta Hahns story is also incredibly moving too.
I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, the flow of the story, it’s pace and experiencing it through the different characters.
Obviously due to its setting there are moving, haunting and disturbing scenes throughout. But there are also scenes of happiness, hope and above all love.
After reading the afterword and learning that some chapters are based on SS officers confessions and comments during their trials it’s almost unbelievable what they said and thought. The nativity of the SS families who lived on the edges of the concentration camps is unbelievable too.
Remote Sympathy is obviously very well researched, with well developed characters and other than the machine seems very relatable to what happened during the time.