Aliza in Naziland by Elyse Hoffman; Thought Provoking Graphic WWII Dark Fantasy About Hatred, Revenge, and Drawing The Line Between Vengeance and Justice
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Elyse Hoffman’s previous books like The Book of Uriel weave the stark graphic reality of the Holocaust with fantastic elements borrowed from Old Testament scripture, Jewish folklore, and European myths and legends. These books use these fantastic and dark elements to comment on the challenging themes of mortality, prejudice, Antisemitism, courage, sacrifice, faith, maturity, despair, rebellion, anger, and hatred.
In what is probably her darkest volume yet, Aliza in Naziland, Hoffman takes that combination of Holocaust reality and dark fantasy up to eleven with a novel that asks questions about hatred, revenge, retribution, and punishment.
16 year old Aliza Aueman is a Holocaust survivor living in 1950’s Beth-Hadassa, Maryland with her adopted father and sisters. The family is trying to adjust to living in America and dealing with school, interests, and family dilemmas while also suffering from PTSD, Anxiety, and other problems manifested from their time in Europe. They also have to deal with hateful organizations like the Anti-Semitic Black Sun Brotherhood planning a demonstration. Aliza likes her new life better than the old one, but she still has problems with obeying authority, restraining herself from getting into fights, and feeling powerless.
One day she receives a mysterious note and a visit from a suspicious looking stranger. He says that his name is Ha-Satan and he is “the Heavenly Prosecutor.” He has a proposition for Aliza. Because Hell has grown too big and there are way too many souls to punish, he has decided to separate Hell into different sections, called Zones, and has appointed random mortals to punish the souls within them. There are specific zones called Naziland.
Aliza is appointed Master over Zone N-1, the most coveted Zone because it contains the souls of prominent Nazis like Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Hitler himself! All Aliza has to do is order something to happen to them, no matter how humiliating, torturous, painful, or destructive.The punishment is temporary and all she has to do is return every day to inflict it again.
Aliza gets a thrill out of this chance to inflict pain on her one-time torturers and takes full advantage of this opportunity. But what starts out as fun and games, albeit violent fun and games, becomes more serious when other people get involved and the hatred of the outside world in Maryland bleeds into the inside world of Zone N-1.
Aliza in Naziland is an interesting premise that asks a lot of tough questions. Questions like how far is too far when you want to seek vengeance? What is the line between justice and revenge? Do the truly hateful deserve everlasting torment and what gives one the right to inflict it? At what point does the victim and survivor become just as heartless and ruthless as their one time persecutor?
This book doesn’t provide any easy answers so much that it asks the Readers to investigate their own feelings about the matter, and imagine what they would do if they were in this situation. It provides a scenario of what this traumatized troubled outspoken young girl did as she inflicts punishment but also weighs the consequences of that punishment to herself, her own psyche, her family, her community, and her victims.
Aliza is written as someone who has deeply suffered by the hands of the Nazis, of that there is no doubt. Her birth parents were murdered and she was sent to a concentration camp called Fox Farm. She had been tortured, abused, malnourished, and assaulted. Her memories of her birth parents diminished and were replaced by those of Nazis shouting, beating, and shooting prisoners. She can't even remember her life before the Holocaust because it seems so far away and remote.
The only positive in Aliza’s life since then had been her new family. Her adopted father, Amos smuggled Jewish orphans out of Europe and adopted four girls, including Aliza, who lost their families. Amos looks after his young charges with firmness, kindness, humor, and strength becoming the father figure that they desperately needed. Aliza also formed a family with her newly adopted sisters, Ute, the quirky animal expert, Shaina the dedicated athlete, and Heidi the sweet tempered beauty with Aliza as the outspoken tomboy.
Aliza and Heidi's relationship is particularly notable throughout the book. Unlike the other three girls who came from Jewish families and suffered persecution, Heidi's father was a Nazi. Her mother and sister were members of a resistance group and were arrested for treason. Heidi became a prisoner in Fox Farm abused by one time colleagues of her father's. While in Fox Farm, Aliza and Heidi bonded and declared themselves sisters even before Amos found them and made their relationship official.
Heidi refuses to acknowledge her original family and identifies as Jewish, since she converted but there are many in the neighborhood who won't let her forget where she came from.
The abuse in Aliza's past, the anxieties and trauma that the Aueman family still have to live with, the bullying that Heidi receives, and the arrival of Holocaust denying hate groups would make even the most devout pacifistic milquetoast person want to punish those who wronged them especially if they were truly as soulless and hateful as the Nazis.
At first the punishment chapters are humorous in a dark comic way. Aliza tells the Nazis to shut up and their mouths are sealed. She makes Goebbels bite his tongue. Himmler holds his breath until he suffocates. Goring hangs himself by piano wire. Hitler bashes his head to the ground and breaks every bone in his body and Heydrich carves out his own heart with his knife.
From this first example alone, we see Aliza has a dark twisted outlook and doesn't mind inflicting it on the Nazis that she is put in charge of. The more time that she spends in Zone N-1 the more grotesque, graphic, and painful the punishments become. She soon acquires a sadistic delight in torturing the men who caused great suffering and whose actions made her miserable after all these years.
However, Aliza’s conscience gets the better of her at times. She dials back on punishments concerning the Nazi’s families. She doesn't want to put their children through that mental anguish because they had terrible fathers and were often too young, brainwashed, or victimized to fight back. She remembers Heidi's past and doesn't want them to suffer guilt by association.
Aliza begins to question her role in Hell when a classmate reveals that they are also a Zone Master and their punishments are too severe even for her to contemplate. The turning point occurs when she learns that there is a personal connection between one of the tortured Nazis and her own family. Suddenly, things like humanity, compassion, remorse, and real justice occur as she has to weigh the consequences of their actions and her own.
It is important to note that this character evolution is granted to Aliza and not the Nazis themselves. They made their choices in life and are now simmering in their own vile hatred. They are incapable of change becoming vile and pathetic as they cling to their racist and Antisemitic views. They are the defeated bullies who can't do anything else but whine in retreat and insist that they were right.
Aliza herself has to go through this change. She has to know when enough is enough. She is the one in danger of losing herself to hatred and revenge. She has to remember her own humanity and to emerge as a better person who doesn't get swallowed up by the hatred that poisoned her enemies.
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