Reviewed by Emma Crowley
As bombs fall over Europe, Hannah Stern is a twenty-seven-year-old nurse, who is just trying to survive. When she takes a position at Vienna’s esteemed psychiatric hospital, Am Steinhof, she thinks it will take her away from the danger.
Her estranged half-brother has arranged the job for her on the condition that she must take his son, Willi there too. He insists it’s a place where Willi will be safe. And Hannah soon forms a close bond with the sweet, fragile child in her care.
At first the hospital seems like a safe haven—a beautiful, airy, spacious place of healing and recovery. But the hospital is a place of secrets. And they are darker than Hannah could ever have imagined. Children, ones just like Willi, are disappearing—not to be healed as promised, but taken somewhere else. Somewhere terrible.
And when Willi’s own life comes under threat—in spite of her half-brother’s position of power in the Nazi military—Hannah must overcome her own fears and act. Then she discovers one of the other nurses is also trying to help patients escape, and Hannah becomes determined to help in any way she can.
But she is only one person up against the enemy. And to save even just one life from the grip of the Nazis, she must risk her own…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Angel of Vienna to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Angel of Vienna is the new book from Kate Hewitt which takes the reader on a dark and horrifying journey to Vienna where a psychiatric hospital is not all it seems. This story was a slow burner for me and although it never fully developed into something with a rip-roaring pace and it didn’t have that edge of your seat feeling of rushing towards a dramatic climax it was a satisfying and certainly eye-opening read. The author focuses on an aspect of World War Two that I had never read about before and to be honest I was reading this book and couldn’t quite fathom at the untold horrors inflicted on such young and innocent children. I’ve read lots of stories about the horrors of the prison camps but shining a light on what such vile and evil people did all under the guise of helping children was a cruelty I had never known of before. After reading this book, I feel well educated on the topic and Kate Hewitt has certainly given a voice to those who were unnecessarily and brutally silenced during the war years and all because they were just that little bit different and had no way of defending themselves. But the Angel of Vienna, as named in the title, does her best to save whom she can but it is a dangerous and dark road that she is venturing down.
The book has a tense opening as an angry and apprehensive crowd stand outside a courthouse in August of 1946 as the accused in the Am Steinhof trials are about to hear their verdict. A woman stands gripping a child’s hand keen to hear what will happen. Deep in her heart she will never let those helpless children be forgotten. Then the first chapter takes us back to 1940 to Steinhoing in Germany where Hannah Stern works in a heim hochland or maternity home. Her official duty is as a paediatric nurse but she often steps in as a midwife. Many maternity homes were set up at this time under the Lebensborn programme where women gave birth to blond, blue eyed babies to help the Fatherland. Many in turn were then given up for adoption to SS families. Physical perfection is the ideal and those that don’t meet that criteria. Well it doesn’t bare thinking about what happens to them but you can hazard a guess as to the outcome. Hannah seems uneasy and unhappy in her job. You can sense that she is not comfortable with the programme and she feels isolated and lonely at the home.
Hannah was a complex character duty bound by her half brother. He secured her training and a job when she needed it most but she doesn’t agree with what she is involved in with regard to the maternity home. She doesn’t come straight out and outline her beliefs in regard to Hitler, the war and the persecution of so many people for to do so would mean instant death. Yet you can read between the lines and tell that she detests everything that Hitler stands for and the unnecessary and barbaric cruelty inflicted on so many. When a request for her arrives to leave the home and travel to Berlin to meet with her half brother Georg, who is involved with military intelligence, Hannah’s life changes dramatically. She knows she can never really say no to Georg considering if he hadn’t helped her she would more or less have been on the streets the reasons for which she gives us brief glimpses into the further the book progresses.
Hannah is wary of Georg and his family situation and is surprised when he requests that she travel to a children’s hospital where his son Willi is to be treated for his cerebral palsy. Georg has arranged for Hannah to have a position as a paediatric nurse where she can also keep an eye on Willi. His time there is to be indefinite. Willi as a character was so beautifully crafted. Yes, he was not perfect but beneath his vulnerability and his disability was a charming young boy who loved his father dearly. Hannah believes him to be very clever as he can read a book but she soon learns this is not the case. Hannah is not involved in the decision making that affects her life and you would love to see her break free from the shackles that bind her but this seemed next to impossible. I felt she had no other option only to go where she was sent and try and make the best of the situation, she found herself in.
Am Spielgrund is the children’s clinic in Vienna that Hannah soon realises is not all that Georg had made it out to be. Did Georg willingly send Willi there knowing what went on or did he have faith in Dr. Jekelius, the medical director, that he could transform Willi and make him into the young German his father so desperately wanted? I felt the book took on a real dark and sinister tone when Hannah arrived at the asylum and was separated from Willi and sent to work in a different section. A certain façade was presented to the outside world about all the good done at the hospital. How they took in children into the reform school and treated those with disabilities and helped better their lives but this was far from the case. Here Kate Hewitt spared no detail in her descriptions of the wards and the children who were existing in desperately sad circumstances all because of a disability they had no control over. It was a sad and harrowing read and you really feel Hannah’s anguish as the wool was very very slowly pulled from her eyes. She was brought to Vienna thinking she would assist Willi but what transpired couldn’t have been further from the truth.
The children in Hannah’s care through no fault of her own are starved, neglected, abused and treated with such indifference by staff who were nothing more than cruel sadists and as for Dr. Jekelius, doctor is not the word that would spring to mind to describe him. He was the complete opposite to a healer and carer. Hannah does her best to visit Willi and a beautiful connection is established between the pair even though Willi is a vastly different boy from the one who first entered the hospital and for all the wrong reasons. Hannah had always yearned for a deep connection that lets you open to hurt and heartbreak and she had never expected Willi to be the one to crack open that part of her heart.
The book as I have mentioned moves along at a very slow pace but on reflection I suppose it only serves to heighten the tension and unease that oozes from every page. There is an air of innocence from Hannah when she first arrives and it takes her quite some time to really sit up and take notice of what is really going on even though Margarethe, a former nun and now nurse tries in her own subtle way to be alert and aware and you will learn lots. It’s a traumatic incident that has Hannah daring to be more vocal and trying to do her best to save some children from an inevitable fate but in doing so she is putting her own life on the line. It’s another example of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the most desperate of circumstances. I applaud Kate Hewitt for writing about a such a terrible and tragic subject that I am sure not many readers of historical fiction know about. What impressed me even more is that the book could have panned out in a certain way but instead I thought the author took two daring risks that paid off and elevated the book to a higher level. The safe route would have been very easy to take but instead being that little bit more daring paid off. The Angel of Vienna, is an interesting, thought provoking and haunting read and I would certainly recommend it.
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