Guest Post and Giveaway: Libby Cone~ Author of War in the Margins

Today, it is my pleasure to welcome Libby Cone, author of War on the Margins. ( totally fantastic book, by the way!) I asked Libby to share with us why she chose this time frame to write about. What is the fascination with WWII? Here's what she had to share. Giveaway details at end of the post.

by Libby Cone
Why do we write so much about World War II? It was the first event that the majority of the planet’s population was aware of while it was happening. It did not involve only Europe, as World War I did, but had theaters of operations in both the eastern and western hemispheres. It resulted in 50-70 million deaths. Something that enormous, something perpetrated by humans upon the whole planet over a relatively short period of time, is unique. What everyone who writes about this event strives for, I think, is to help the readership wrap its brain around this enormity by breaking it down into smaller components. Like a fractal, which looks the same when broken into smaller pieces, looking at the war’s effect on a smaller group of people does not reduce its impact, but rather clarifies it. Readers of Holocaust literature know that the phrase “six million,” when thrown around enough, begins to sound like any other number. But when one portrays individuals, one removes the barriers of impersonality and reaches the reader much more directly.

I was fascinated by the story of the WWII occupation of the Channel Islands because it was free of many of the barriers to understanding usually faced by English speakers. A reader is always confronted with the choice of identification or non-identification with a character. If someone we know suffers a misfortune, we always, whether we realize it or not, tell ourselves that the same thing cannot happen to us because we are younger/healthier/more vigilant than the sufferer.

The story of the Channel Islands makes it difficult to distance oneself. It took place on British soil. Most of the people on the receiving end spoke English as a first language. As most self-identified Jews and members of the organized Jewish community left in the haphazard evacuation prior to occupation, those left behind were indistinguishable from the general population, making them less “different” and easier for readers of all backgrounds to identify with. The harrowing language of the documents from the occupation, with local officials lapsing easily into using terminology like “Aryan,” is verbatim, and not filtered through a layer of translation. Plain old English-speaking folks, people who drank tea and listened to the BBC, both Jewish and Gentile, were treated abominably by the German occupiers, and many of the local officials did nothing to ease their burden. Some neighbors took this as an opportunity to settle old scores, and informed on others. Other quite ordinary people risked (and some suffered) the death sentence to hide Eastern European slave laborers from their captors and to listen to the BBC on clandestine radios. When the reader can no longer think “Well, I don’t speak Polish,” or “I’m not Jewish” or “I live in a modern democracy” in order to establish this unconscious distance, the events really hit home.

Thank you Libby for your insightful thoughts. If you haven't read Libby's book yet, War on the Margins is being released in paperback this month. Be sure to look for it!

For the giveaway, Libby is being most generous in opening this to international entries. Thank you so much, Libby!

Three very fortunate winners will receive one autographed copy of her book, War on the Margins. To enter, you need to comment on some aspect of Libby's guest post. No applicable comment, no valid entry!

Bonus entries available :
+2 for old followers - remind me how you follow and under what name
+3 for new followers thru GFC
+3 for posting about and linking to drawing or tweeting. Please, please please, DO NOT leave 3 separate comments saying you tweeted or that you are a follower! :) Be sure to leave an e-mail contact.

Deadline is September 6th at 5 PM (est) Good luck!