The Hidden Book is told in alternating timelines. In one, a young man named Nico is incarcerated at Mauthausen*, a German concentration camp in northern Austria, near Linz. He manages to befriend a young village girl named Lena who lives with her parents and her developmentally disabled sister just outside the gates of the camp. Nico’s friend Matteo is the camp photographer, and is tasked with documenting the activities of the camp for some of the SS officers. Nico and Matteo conspire to smuggle a copy of the photographs out of the camp; they enlist Lena’s help to hide the photos in the stone wall outside her home.
The other timeline is the story of Hannah, a young Australian girl living with her mother on their farm. Her father has died, and her grandfather – Nico – comes to visit from Yugoslavia, bringing with him a book that Hannah’s mother immediately hides away from her. Eventually Hannah graduates and moves to the city, but her mother refuses to let her see the hidden book, finally admitting that she threw it away.
What follows is the story of Mauthausen being liberated, Nico going back to his native Spain, and Lena uncovering the book and returning it to him in the years after the way. It isn’t exactly a spoiler to reveal that Lena and Nico wind up marrying; Hannah is their granddaughter, determined to tell their story, and the story of all the prisoners of that time.
Nico and Lena’s story was compelling, both horrific and beautiful, but I could have used some editing on Hannah’s story. There were a few things in those chapters that felt superfluous, but maybe I just was more invested in Nico and Lena. And then I think about the actual story, and how that time period is not so far removed from where we’re at now in the world, and how the world feels like it’s a little bit on fire right now, and I feel like stories like this should be shouted from the rooftops in the vain hope that history doesn’t repeat itself..
*I did some Googling, because I was unfamiliar with Mauthausen. I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never heard of it. We’re all familiar with Dachau and Bergen Belsen and Auschwitz, but according to the American Holocaust Museum’s website, the Germans established more than 44,000 camps, prisons, ghettos, and other incarceration sites between 1938 and 1945. In May of 1945, US troops captured the camp’s commandant. He was shot in the belly during an escape attempt and died a few days later of his injuries. Another commandant died by suicide before he could be captured. After the war, a US tribunal convicted 61 high ranking officials associated with the camp, sentencing 58 of them to death and executing 49 of the 58. An additional 224 other personnel (guards, civilians, etc.) were tried, and 90% of them were convicted.
It’s estimated that nearly 200,000 prisoners passed through the Mauthausen camp system between August 1938 and May 1945. At least 95,000 died there.
Nico and Lena’s story is just one of literally hundreds of thousands.
