Speed reading

Chris Nancollas encounters Nazis

When Germans invaded Paris, Ninette Dreyfus and her wealthy Jewish family were forced to flee to the South of France. Ninette’s War: A Jewish Story of Survival in 1940s France by John Jay (Profile Books, £20; Tablet price £18) is the story of how their comfortable existence turned into a life of poverty, hunger and overt antisemitism, as the Vichy government turned on its Jewish citizens. What gives this book its power is the contrast between their almost mundane exile and the insidious onset of Nazi persecution. A worthy addition to the Holocaust lexicon.

The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis (Allen Lane, £40; Tablet price £36) is Stephan Malinowski’s forensic dissection of the relationship between the former German ruling dynasty and the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist Party. Prince Wilhelm, the son of the Kaiser, cultivated close ties with the Nazis, establishing a connection between the aristocracy and the far right which lingers to this day. Extremely well researched and engagingly written, this book exposes both the extent of their involvement and, after Hitler’s defeat, Wilhelm’s risible claim to be a resistance leader. A magisterial account of a forgotten chapter in European history.

A Man of Few Words (Saqi Books, £16.99; Tablet price £15.29) by Carlo Greppi is the story of Lorenzo Perrone, the Italian bricklayer who smuggled food to Primo Levi in Auschwitz, almost certainly ensuring his survival. Recon­struct­ing Perrone’s life was dif­ficult as Lorenzo was a taciturn loner, who never married, and led an itinerant life with little hinter­land to explore. What mo­tiv­ated him to take this enormous risk, nobody knows. Despite being im­mortalised by Levi, he remained in the shadows, barely surviving in a world he had grown to detest. A fitting tribute to a singular man.