The Collaborator

To some, Miklos Nagy was a hero; to others, he was The Collaborator. Sixty years later, Annika decides to find out the truth for herself. She doesn’t have much information to go on, since her grandmother refuses to speak of her time in Nazi-occupied Hungary. Annika leaves Sydney and embarks on a journey that takes her to Budapest and Tel Aviv as she seeks to discover more of her history and about the mysterious man who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from death camps by putting them on a special train to Palestine. Not only will Annika discover the truth about her past and her grandmother, she will also discover more about herself and what she wants in life.

Although this is a work of fiction, it is based on real events and I was very glad to read it. I have read quite a bit about the Holocaust, but I didn’t know much about it from the Hungarian Jewish perspective. The things that people do to each other are horrifying without even fictionalizing them. The reasons people offer to justify hate towards each other are ridiculous. Everyone matters. This story, in particular, was a great example of how atrocious those acts were, but also of how there can be forgiveness and how sometimes we don’t have the whole story and our anger is misplaced. The ending was tragic, but also very human. I recommend you read this book to delve into the world’s history as well as into human nature.