#34. Set In A Landlocked Country – Gerta by Kateřina Tučková (Kindle)

Obviously the first thing I did for this reading prompt was Google ‘landlocked countries’ thinking that would help narrow things down, only to find there are 44 landlocked countries to choose from! I got as far as C and saw Czech Republic and stopped. I’ve visited Prague numerous times, and read various books set in Prague. I wondered if I should continue scanning the list of countries just for something a bit different, and then I remembered an Amazon Prime First Reads from January 2021 I hadn’t read. It was set during WWII in Brno but I kept putting off reading it because I thought it might be too depressing. It was a wretched story, but one that needed to be read. One that told of a piece of Czech history I knew nothing about. 

 

“1945. Allied forces liberate Nazi-occupied Brno, Moravia. For Gerta Schnirch, daughter of a Czech mother and a German father aligned with Hitler, it’s not deliverance; it’s a sentence. She has been branded an enemy of the state. Caught in the changing tides of a war that shattered her family—and her innocence—Gerta must obey the official she, along with all ethnic Germans, is to be expelled from Czechoslovakia. With nothing but the clothes on her back and an infant daughter, she’s herded among thousands, driven from the only home she’s ever known. But the injustice only makes Gerta stronger, more empowered, and more resolved to seek justice. Her journey is a relentless quest for a seemingly impossible forgiveness. And one day, she will return.

Spanning decades and generations, Kateřina Tučková’s breathtaking novel illuminates a long-neglected episode in Czech history. One of exclusion and prejudice, of collective shame versus personal guilt, all through the eyes of a charismatic woman whose courage will affect all the lives she’s touched. Especially that of the daughter she loved, fought for, shielded, and would come to inspire.”

I think when we visit museums or read history books about WWII, we think we know the whole story. When I saw the premise of Gerta I was instantly intrigued, hence why I had opted for the book from the ‘first reads’ selection. I am disappointed that it has taken until now to read the book, as it took me on a journey to a part of history I knew nothing about, and it made me look at WWII through different eyes.

War is often about hatred, and it doesn’t matter about who is right, or who is wrong; both the innocent and the guilty end up being lumped together and suffering at the hands of others. 

Gerta Schnirch, born to a Czech mother and a German father, soon realises that hatred and violence will form her life in this war-torn world, where her nationality will come into question, and her friends will disappear overnight. This is a child who cannot win. Set in Brno, Czechoslovakia during Hitler’s rise to power, her father treats Gerta with disdain for being too Czech, and for identifying with her mother’s Czech values. She would often argue with her father and brother over their Nazi ideology, and she witnessed how the war broke down the relationship of her parents.

“Around then, their household split into opposing factions, Czech and German, and only she and her mother were on the Czech side. A rift emerged between Gerta and her father.”

As the war comes to an end and the political climate in Brno changes, the Czechs see the Germans as Nazi or Nazi sympathisers, and if not, they recall how Germans benefited during the war with better rations and wages. Gerta is seen as a German man’s child and therefore no longer welcome in her Czech home. She is forced to march towards Austria on a long and arduous journey. She would meet many other women, children, and elderly men, who would fall along the wayside through fatigue, starvation and dysentery; some would be raped and killed by Czech soldiers.

The description of the treatment of these individuals is reminiscent of the death marches the Germans forced on Jews and concentration camp prisoners. It felt like the Czechs thought justice could be served via ‘an eye for an eye’ solution; and it didn’t end with the expulsion of Germans from Brno. As Gerta makes her way from the city towards the country and begins works on farmland, she witnesses the expulsion of families who had worked the land for centuries in favour of Czech families who knew nothing about farming the land.

Gerta’s story is a brutal one, from the death of her mother at a young age, to the trauma of domestic abuse, rape and general humiliation. The birth of her daughter serves as a reminder of what she has already endured, but it also gives her strength, the strength to carry on, to fight for her future and you can’t help but admire her resilience throughout the book. 

The story partially reads like a memoir of Gerta’s life as we travel with her from childhood through to her death, in a part of history that is not well-known among the English-speaking world due to the Cold War. It is a demanding read, and I could only manage small chunks at a time because I had to keep Googling various places and events that happened. I knew nothing about the Brno death march until I read this book, and whilst the narrative is fictious, you can’t forget whilst reading, that the type of events described in the book really happened to people. The main challenge in reading this book was accepting the inhumanity on both sides.  

I did find the book a little confusing in places and I’m not sure if that is because I am reading a translation of Tučková’s novel. There were times when I got a little lost, not knowing what period we had moved to, or which point of view we were looking at. I would have preferred for the whole book to be told by Gerta, as it was her story to tell. She is painted as a tragic figure, alone for most of her life, bar when her daughter was growing up, and it was bittersweet when her own daughter left her to lead a life of her own. 

This is a book with a cast of characters that you can’t forget, some good, some evil, some of whom wish to get revenge, whilst others prefer to choose forgiveness. The characters conveyed their innermost fears, of what it was like to be living on a precipice, not knowing whether you were going to survive from one day to the next, and how you had to make difficult decisions, not knowing whether they would help you to survive the aftermath of war or not.

Ultimately it is a story that shows life is not black and white, there is a big grey area, and people are easily swayed into making the wrong choices. Tučková leaves it up to the reader to delve into the issues of morality rather than wagging her finger at any one group, which I think is important, considering what a dark point in history WWII was. The Nazis might have initially spread ethnic hatred, but in their wake, the hatred against other innocents was just as intolerable, and then of course the innocents had to face the repercussions of communism. No-one in power was standing up for the common good or trying to promote peace and goodwill between people. This is a book where you feel a little numb once you finish reading it.

 

Genre: Historical Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, World War II, Czech Literature

Release Date: 1^st February 2021

Publisher: Amazon Crossing

Pages: 459

 

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