Carole Barker's Reviews > Ashes in the Snow

A murder mystery set in an unlikely place…where so few lives were considered to have any value.

In December, 1943 a young boy discovers a dead body, and w.hat makes this story so unique is found in the details. The dead body is that of Dr. Sigismund Braun, who worked in the building known as Block 10 at Auschwitz. There Dr. Braun was engaged in research for the Reich, alongside several others. Giole is the boy who finds the dead man. He is a gifted and highly intelligent Italian youngster who lives in Block 10, where he is a favorite of a man he calls Uncle Mengele. He is a very attractive child, a talented artist, adept at learning new languages….but he is also Jewish and a twin, which makes him of great interest to Mengele. His twin does not share his inquisitive nature, and is consequently more frequently experimented upon by the doctors, though Giole remains unaware of the distinction. Braun’s death is first thought to be an accident, caused by a chunk of apple found in his throat on which he is presumed to have choked. But rumors are flying around the camp, and help is sought from Berlin. And so Detective Hugo Fischer, a reknowned criminologist who is resented by his supervisor, is sent to investigate and put the rumors to rest. Hugo has heard whispers about things that go on at Auschwitz, and his boss has warned him to keep his nose out of anything not directly related to his investigation. This is Hitler’s Germany, after all, and those who value their career and their life criticize actions taken by the Reich at their own peril. From the moment Hugo arrives at the camp, he is exposed to casual brutality, nauseating smells and sights, and confirmation that truly evil things are happening there. Hugo is no devout Nazi; he has learned not to make waves, to say what is expected of him, and to focus on doing his job rather than on what is going on around him. He also has something to hide; he is suffering from a physical condition that, to the eyes of those pursuing healthy Aryan perfection, would render him defective and damaged. If his secret were discovered, he would lose his job…and possibly his life. He medicates himself with morphine when symptoms flair, as of course they begin to do upon his arrival at Auschwitz. As he interviews people who were in Braun’s orbit, including young Giole, he realizes that Braun’s death was no accident, it was murder. He alsosees the different classes of residents at the camp, for it is far more complicated and nuanced than just Nazis and their prisoners. There are the German officers and medical staff, both doctors and nurses, who are of course the most highly favored. But there are German prisoners who are not Jewish; criminals, Gypsies, Communists and others who have fallen afoul of the regime. There are also Jewish prisoners who, while still reviled, have a better life in the camp because they are perceived to be of some value….some who were doctors, for example, and are still used in that capacity. Hugo discovers that he is not the only person deeply troubled by what is going on at Auschwitz, the medical experimentation that goes against international standards and of course the mass killing of prisoners. Hugo must find a killer, keep his health condition from being noticed, and wrestle with his conscience as he sees atrocity after atrocity committed in front of him and about which he can do nothing.
Hugo is a fascinating character, definitely flawed and both well aware of and ashamed by his cowardice in the face of evil. Yet he is too honorable and too committed to his job to settle for a convenient answer to the death of this Nazi doctor. Most characters seem to have some measure of conflict with which they struggle….an ardent Nazi who is sexually attracted to a Jewish nurse, a German woman of quality who has been imprisoned for her Communist views and accepts a life as a prostitute for the German soldiers rather than live the bleak life of most prisoners, and a gifted young boy who can’t (or won’t) see the evil and danger which surround him. The novel is well-plotted and paced, and the characters are fully developed and intriguing. It was no more obvious to me than it was to Hugo who the killer might be, nor was it clear when or even if Hugo would be able to get to some measure of truth. I was also fascinated to learn that the story was inspired by author Oriana Ramunno’s great-uncle, who didn’t share his story of having been interned in a concentration camp until the author was 18. His memories and the author’s own research over the following year helped to frame the degrees of evil and willful ignorance found in the German characters in the book, as well as the reality that some actually did try in some fashion to help the Jews around them. Not enough, some would rightly argue, but even some small measure of help may have saved a few lives, or rendered those lives marginally less difficult. I found Ashes in the Snow to be not only an intriguing story, but also a though-provoking look at people living under the Nazi regime. This is not a book for those looking for a sanitized read; violence and gore are to be found between the covers, as they were in the camp itself. Readers of books like Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series will likely find this novel of interest, as would any who like a well-crafted mystery and have an interest in Germany in the last days of the Nazis. Many thanks to NetGalley and to HarperVia and HarperCollins Publishers for an advanced reader’s copy of Ashes in the Snow, as well as to Oriana Ramunno and Katherine Gregor, who translated the novel from the Italian.