A book about the most terrifying mystery of the 20th century: how could my own family be involved in the Holocaust?
Author: Katarina Baer
Finnish original: He olivat natseja
Publisher: Teos, 2016
Number of pages: 360 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, German translation, English sample, English synopsis
Rights sold: Estonia, Post Factum | Eesti Meedia
After the horrors of the First World War the future that before had seemed happy and clear for the Baltic German family Baer took a new direction. The family’s fate became closely intertwined with the growing National Socialist movement in Germany.
In her acclaimed book journalist Katarina Baer tells the story of her grandparents, an ordinary Baltic German family in the beginning of the 20th century. She describes the life in the Baltic regions as it was during the years of the Russian empire, German colonies scattered throughout the area; the First World War, which stripped the privileged family of their posessions; the life during the war in Berlin, in an apartment taken from Jews; her grandfather, an active and idealist Nazi, and her grandmother, secretly a Nazi till the end of her days.
They Were Nazis is a masterful example of the best narrative nonfiction: a book based on thorough research but still a page-turner. It has gotten glowing reviews and it won the Book of the Year award in Bonnier’s Competition for Grand Journalism Prize 2016.
“Katarina Baer’s book is a thought-provocing and very original journey into the dark side of the European history.”
– Helsingin Sanomat newspaper
“Baer adjusts the focus to the everyday life with the help of letters, archives and the memories of her relatives, and she frames everything: the ordinary […] life goes side by side with the horrors of history. This creates the paradox and the living tension of the book.”
– Kodin Pellervo magazine
Also available:
The Greatest Leap Forward (2020)
About the author
Katarina Baer