The Goddess of Warsaw, Lisa Barr, author; Jane Oppenheimer, narrator
Before the Holocaust, the Jewess Bina Blonski, was a rising star. Now, instead of acting, she is a resistance fighter. Using her Aryan looks to pass as a non-Jew, she helps to move supplies into the Warsaw ghetto. As time passes, she becomes more and more involved, sometimes compromising herself, performing whatever job needs to be done. She even becomes an assassin.
What started out as book about a Jewish heroine during the war, however, soon becomes a story about how much more she loves and prefers her best friend’s husband who is also her husband’s brother. It becomes distracting and annoying. She secretly spies on him when he showers or undresses. She has erotic sexual fantasies, some which come to fruition. Often, she chooses to compromise others to satisfy her own desires. So, for me, the story lost its way. I did not think I would be able to finish reading it, but I kept hoping it would become more about the bravery and not about the passion Bina felt for Jakub’s brother, Aleksander.
Had the book been more about a Jewess able to pass for an Aryan during the Holocaust, a Jewess who was instrumental in the fight against the Nazis, a Jewess as an example of the effort of Jews to fight back during a time of consummate evil, the book would have been more credible for me. Instead, the book becomes a story about a woman that could be “any woman” who is obsessed with someone other than her husband, who is consumed with her own selfish needs, whose work, regardless of what it was, seemed secondary to her personal desires. While I had hoped for a character viewed as a woman of great courage and strength, instead, she seemed to be shallow and more interested in her love life than the resistance. Eventually, however, the tragedies she experienced during the war, make her a woman possessed with the need for revenge.
After the war, she settled in America. There she becomes a famous and successful actress again, but with a new identity. She becomes Lena Browning. When she discovers a program called Operation Paperclip, a real program that the United States actually used to rescue Nazis who had particular skills they wanted to use, like. scientists, engineers, etc., she also discovers the existence of the names of those rescued, and she steals the list. Is what she does with the list acceptable?
Years later, she wants the world to know the true story of her life. No one knows who she was or what she did during the war or in secret even currently. What kind of a person is she? Is she a heroine or a cold-hearted killer? Is she selfish or merely human? Does Sienna Harris capture the real Bina Blonski?
I felt like the author took a Jewish resistance fighter and turned her into a woman of the night, bent on revenge, into a woman of little moral character with a very warped sense of justice. Most people who withstood and survived the horrors of the Holocaust were scarred and could not speak of their experiences, but I had hoped that those reading this book would come away with a positive view of the Jews who had sacrificed themselves to save others during the Holocaust. After reading this book, I had my doubts. I believe that many readers will have to suspend disbelief in order to believe many of the scenes in this book. I also found the fairytale ending unsatisfying.