Found in translation: Postcard resistance
By Dave
April 27th, 2009 | Leave a comment
German novelist Hans Fallada wrote his World War II-era novel, Every Man Dies Alone, based on the real-life resistance movement started by a middle-aged couple in circa 1940 Germany. The couple distributed anti-Nazi messages on handwritten postcards all around Berlin.
Fallada, a successful novelist before the war, never saw the book go to print. He suffered from mental illness and died of a morphine overdose in 1947 just months before it was published, reports veryshortlist.com.
But now the story is being published in English.
Otto and Anna Quangel started their campaign after learning that their only son had been killed during Germany’s invasion of France.
“Mother! The Fuhrer has murdered my son,” read the first postcard Otto wrote and left to be seen in public.
Famous Holocaust survivor Primo Levi calls Every Man Dies Alone “the greatest book ever written about the German resistance to the Nazis.”
Resistance is not always futile.
