Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Snow falls and a woman prepares for a funeral she has long expected, yet hoped would never come. As she pats her hair and straightens her skirt, she tells herself this isn’t the first time she’s lost someone. Lifting a delicate, battered wristwatch from a little box on her dresser, she presses it to her cheek. Suddenly, she’s lost in memory…
January 1945, Dachau, Germany. As the train rattles through the bright, snowy Bavarian countryside, the still beauty outside the window hides the terrible scenes inside the train, where men and women are packed together, cold and terrified. Jewish watchmaker Isaac Schüller can’t understand how he came to be here, and is certain he won’t be leaving alive.
When the prisoners arrive at Dachau concentration camp, Isaac is unexpectedly pulled from the crowd and installed in the nearby household of Senior Officer Becher and his young, pretty, spoiled wife. With his talent for watchmaking, Isaac can be of use to Becher, but he knows his life is only worth something here as long as Becher needs his skills.
Anna Reznick waits table and washes linens for the Bechers, who dine and socialise and carry on as if they don’t constantly have death all around them. When she meets Isaac she knows she’s found a true friend, and maybe more. But Dachau is a dangerous place where you can never take love for granted, and when Isaac discovers a heartbreaking secret hidden in the depths of Becher’s workshop, it will put Anna and Issac in terrible danger…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Watchmaker of Dachau to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Watchmaker of Dachau is the second novel from Carly Schabowski and it takes us to the heart of the concentration camp Dachau, just outside Munich, where unspeakable atrocities occurred during World War Two. The story opens with the briefest of prologues which normally give us the merest of information to get our interest piqued. Not much at all was given away here except that in 1996 in Cornwall, a woman is waiting for someone or something and is finally facing up to something. To be honest, by the time I reached the very end I had completely forgotten that the prologue had ever taken place.
I found myself jolted back to the modern day having been completely immersed in the story that unfolded behind the walls of the camp much of what took place there having been kept secret from the world at large at the time. The ending did tie in nicely with the prologue but I found it to be rushed and would have liked even just a few more pages of exploration allowing me the time to soak in the consequences and developments I was reading of. But aside from that I found this book to be much better than the author’s debut. The chapters were short and intense which made me fly through the story and I read it more or less in two sittings. There is a story within a story taking place here, not dual timeline, more so they run alongside each other as the main characters endure suffering, brutality, loss and devastation.
The focus is on two people who come to be interred in the camp because of the simple fact of their religion. Isaac and Anna are very different in age, he being in his 60’s and Anna is in her late 20’s.Yet a friendship is forged through circumstance and it is one full of hope, love and strength as they try to sustain each other through harrowing times, danger and terror. Loyalty, sacrifice, kindness, hope and human connection are the main traits they find in each other and as they navigate the last year or so of the war in the camp they come to rely on each other for support, courage and stability. Theirs is not a love story and in a way I was glad of this, it’s been done before in books of this genre. Instead the focus is on simple human interaction and connection and through the supporting cast of characters they aim to make it to the bitter end to see freedom no matter what horrors, deprivation, starvation and traumas that are endlessly thrown in their direction. When all else is lost, hope and love stay strong.
Initially I did find the story jumped around a bit too much from character to character until it found its rhythm and pace and then settled down. The chapters go between Anna, Isaac and young Friedrich, the son of the camp commandant. Isaac had escaped capture for the majority of the war, he remained hidden away in his tiny village. His shop no longer open, yet he ventured there to look at the watches and all the things he has fixed in the past. His profession will see him through the tough times as he captured and sent to Dachau. We’ve all read the details of the various camps that existed at the time and here no detail was spared. To Isaac, it’s a minefield and he can’t comprehend that this has happened to him. He thanks God that his wife Hannah had long passed away and did not have to endure this torture and humiliation.
As a reader over time you can become hardened to the different descriptions of what the prisoners went through. They do not lose their shock or their impact but just when you think you have read it all, having read so many books in this genre, there was one scene which was just utterly horrific and barbaric. I cried out in shock as it was just so difficult to read and then with a turn of the page when I thought I couldn’t be shocked even more there was a description which just made my stomach churn. I had to stop for a moment or two before I could read on as it was so just so brutal and made me feel such sadness and anger for what went on.
Isaac’s story takes us to a different area of the camp few prisoners would have known about. The camp commandant Beecher confiscated the tools he uses for watch repairs. Beecher was an abusive, cruel, sadistic man who even his son lived in fear of. He had an ultimate plan for Issac and he finds himself working at the house on site where the Beecher family live. Confined to a shed doing any repairs Beecher asks of Isaac, he soon meets Anna. She too is a prisoner but has been tasked to work as a maid in the house. She brings food and water to Isaac and they strike up a friendship because they know that their life hangs by a thread. That at any moment on the whim of a guard or Beecher they could be gone and their light extinguished forever. They recollect their life stories to each other, the freedom they once took for granted, the love and support of their families and how they imagine freedom once more will be theirs. They are constantly on edge and who wouldn’t be given their situation. They try to do everything right but they never know if a certain day will be their last.
In the shed, underneath the floorboards, Issac discovers a hidden bundle of letters, drawings and diary entries. He decides to read these and soon learns they were written only the year before in that very shed. Every so often we have chapters in the form of letters and we have a new story emerging. One of true love as the author writes to the person he or she loves the most. It’s a beautifully written love story that gives Anna and Isaac comfort yet they are keen to know what happened to the author. I was hoping for a bit more of a search to uncover the answers behind the letters from Isaac and Anna but this couldn’t have happened as they hadn’t a lot to go on and really through weakness from lack of food and the panic and fear that existed daily for them this searching and uncovering a mystery couldn’t really happen.
I did think the aspect of the story with the letters when all was ultimately revealed was so bittersweet and heartbreaking and I had to re-read a page or two several times to make sure I was understanding the connections. This is where I thought things were rushed a hit and bit more fleshing out of the explanation was needed. Near the very end, I did think hold on had I read this before in that something happens and I could have sworn I read more or less the exact same thing in another book. I pushed this idea aside as I knew it was a new book but I thought it was strange that I had this real feeling of déjà vu from another book. The name of which I can’t recall at the moment.
Yes Anna and Isaac are strong and inspiring, and I don’t think I will look at lemons in the same way again, but for me who really was a stand out character was Friedrich. He returns home from school having been called back by his father. He has no clue why and has never been to this house occupied by his parents. No doubt about it there are very strong echoes of Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas when it comes to Friedrich. That’s what instantly sprang to mind when I first encountered him, the innocence of him as he has no clue what exists beyond the boundaries of his garden wall. He is not allowed to enter certain rooms or venture to certain places on the grounds. He knows Anna and Isaac are Jews and that he is meant to intensely dislike them but yet he hasn’t that within him to do. He sees them as normal people which they are and he has no idea of the camp or what goes on there.
Friedrich is lonely and longs for friendship and love because he gets none of this from his parents. I loved Friedrich as a character, he was the total anthesis of his parents and what he does for Anna and Isaac was just so beautiful and heartwrenching. The author did a brilliant job of showing how clueless Friedrich was to what was going on around him and how he saw the good in everything because he knew no different.
The Watchmaker of Dachau was a very good read and one I enjoyed immensely although enjoyed is the wrong word given the subject matter. It’s an important, memorable story that will linger with one long after the turn of the last page.
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