Under the Naga Tail by Mae Bunseng Taing and James Taing; The God of Naziland The Fuhrer's Master Book One by Elyse Hoffman

 

Under the Naga Tail by Mae Bunseng Taing and James Taing 

Under the Naga Tail is a poignant and stirring account of Mae Bunseng Taing’s childhood and young adulthood in Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge was a Communist movement led by Pol Pot that won the Cambodian Civil War, seized the capital of Phnom Penh and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Their reign was autocratic, totalitarian, and repressive. Many deaths happened as a result of social engineering projects, widespread famine from failed collectivization and self-sufficiency programs, the murder of political opponents, racist emphasis to maintain Cambodian national superiority, and genocide of Cambodian minorities. It ended when Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and Pol Pot was toppled the following month. 

Taing recalls his youth as a time of being sheltered and ignorant from the changes soon to occur. He writes about being amazed about the Apollo 11 Moon Landing despite school curriculum describing the United States as an enemy. His family store often welcomed soldiers as customers, and the occasional straggler from military desertion. Sometimes adults whispered about battles and revolutions in the capital but as a child, he paid it no mind.

The sad part was Taing recalls that the Khmer Rouge revolution was something that the people of his village were hoping for. Hindsight would tell them otherwise but at the time, they didn't know that. They thought that finally the people would have a voice in their government, the rural villages would be represented, and the old structure would fall. 

It's a terrifying echo as the Taing Family welcome the military with a parade of heroes only to have those same soldiers order them to leave their homes in a forced evacuation.They once looked upon the Khmer Rouge as freedom fighters against the monarchy that once held power over them. Instead, they exchanged one group of dictators for another.

Among the more traumatic moments are the times in which the forced evacuations resulted in separations from family members by death, detainment, or just simply trailing behind and losing sight of each other. Taing recalls one woman weeping when she couldn't find her son who was with her in line but then disappeared. Taing heard stories about a Chinese couple taking in a Cambodian child but were not verified. 

A few times Taing himself was separated from siblings, nieces, and nephews, and his father. He wouldn't reunite with many of them until years later and his strong loving father was reduced to a broken old man.

There are many pages and chapters which focus on the hard physical labor that Taing and his family endured in the collective farms. It was excruciating, painful, back breaking labor that served no real purpose except as a means of torture. They were also subjected to physical, mental, and sexual torture and abuse by soldiers and a regime that considered them as less than human. It was a traumatic time that left scars on Taing's mind, body, and heart for decades.

The main theme of the book is endurance. Taing’s endurance through such adversity can be seen throughout the book especially when he escapes through the jungle rather than be tortured and abused any longer. He spent a lot of time living off the land, using landmarks to figure out his location, and brokering alliances with other escapees who would rather die quickly in the jungle than slowly under captivity.

 Even after the Khmer Rouge was defeated, he and other refugees faced suspicion, prejudice, and poverty while in exile in other countries like Thailand. In some ways their situation wasn't too different except they weren't living under a dictatorship. That strength and endurance carried Taing and his family from Cambodia, to Thailand, to the United States where they settled into a new life.

Taing eventually settled in Connecticut where he ran a house painting business for over 30 years, married, and fathered children of his own. He eventually reunited with his father, siblings, and many members of his extended family. His son, James, inspired by his father's past, served as co-author of this book.

This book is a testament to Taing's strength and endurance surviving under a dictatorship, escaping it, and building a new life in another country. 

The God of Naziland The Fuhrer's Master Book One by Elyse Hoffman 

This is going to be a hard book to review.

In Elyse Hoffman’s Aliza in Naziland, Aliza, a young Holocaust survivor, was chosen by Ha-Satan to control one particular Zone in Hell, Zone N-1 which Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Josef Goebbels, and Hermann Goering reside. Aliza got a sadistic delight out of torturing the human monsters that ruined her life and destroyed millions of others. However there were lines that she wouldn't cross and when they were, she asked herself if she was seeking justice or revenge and if she had become the same monster that she once despised.

The follow up looks at the residents of Zone N-1 particularly Hitler and Heydrich and follows their afterlife of physical and emotional turmoil having all eternity to come to terms with what they did in life. As compared to its predecessor which was set shortly after the Holocaust ended, The God of Naziland is set in modern day and Zone N-1 has been through 612 Masters. Hitler and his fellow Nazis prepare for the next one and are in for a few surprises. #613 or Gottchen (“Little God”), as they call her, is unlike the other Zone Masters. The former Nazis weigh their confusion, suspicion, and ambitions for what they can do through this young girl.

This book is hard to review because it does something that might be controversial. It humanizes the Nazis without excusing or defending their actions in life. I cannot overstate how difficult a task that must be for any author, let alone someone like Hoffman who has written several WWII/Holocaust Historical Fiction novels that combined with Jewish folklore such as the aforementioned Aliza and The Book of Uriel.

To explore and fully understand a dictatorship and why it happened and the guilt and justice during the aftermath, it's important to understand the people who perpetrated it. Here Hoffman does it extraordinarily well.

She does it not by justifying them by any means but exploring their feelings about this young Master who is so different from her predecessors. She is  7 when most are teenagers to adult age. She also stumbled upon the summoning book that sends the Master to Ha-Satan unlike previous masters like Aliza who Ha-Satan purposely singled out and communicated with before giving them the book.

Gottchen’s accidental discovery is different but not fully explained why. There are a couple of possibilities why this happened. One could be because of her age, Ha-Satan thought that she wouldn't understand the responsibility or be able to weigh the consequences because she was too young. (The questions of why he let her do it at all, didn't keep it from her, and find a more suitable age-appropriate Master is unanswered.)

Another possibility is the time period on Earth. Unlike the previous book, it is set in modern day, not the mid-20th century. Aliza’s hatred for the Nazis was still fresh and the trauma was still recent and real. Gottchen only knows about the Nazis from history books so she has no personal feelings towards them that can be manipulated. Ha-Satan might have just figured that anyone will do.

There is another possibility that makes perfect sense once we learn about Gottchen's backstory. She is filled with hatred but not for the Nazis. Without going into the details, her life on Earth is one of abuse, neglect, and betrayal from adults that she thought that she could trust. Perhaps Ha-Satan recognized that anger and powerlessness and realized that she can transfer that hatred onto the Nazis. 

Oddly enough it is that trauma that influences how she actually treats them by not doing anything to them at all. She knows what it's like to feel small and vulnerable so she doesn't take advantage of it. 

In a strange way, it also explains why she gets along with the Nazis. Any person in any place, even Nazis in Hell, are far better than the people that she left behind. Her abuse from home is what is at the forefront of her mind and Hitler and co’s actions are faded into a history in which she knows of second hand.

The fascinating aspect is that Gottchen's kindness puts the Nazis more on edge than if she was cruel. Heydrich in particular suspects ulterior motives and is waiting for her to reveal a more duplicitous nature to the point of paranoia. He does this even though he bonds with the young girl to the point of learning about her past.

 Heydrich observes Gottchen closely, searches for her motives or clues about her real character, and hopes for a blind spot or moment of weakness that he can exploit. This almost predatory behavior puts a dark edge on his seemingly endearing moments with the girl. 

Hitler also has a unique position. He is traumatized by a recent encounter with a Master in which he experienced the Holocaust first hand. That memory is still in his mind so even though he acts like his anti-Semitic self, there is a small part of himself that remembers that punishment and the life that he could have lived. It's also worth mentioning that he tells the other Nazis that he is only befriending the girl so she can be swayed to their thinking and take their views to the mortal world.

In fact that's what makes this book a hard one to like. For all of the torture and the eternal suffering, the Nazis are still irredeemable. They never acknowledge that they were wrong in life or that they created an evil genocide. The closest that they come to is when Heydrich defends Gottchen from some of his allies.

 It is a half-hearted attempt that he doesn't realize that the system that he helped create was the problem, not the personal attacks on this one girl. Instead he and the other Nazis hide behind their usual excuses. They want to create a better Germany. It's what they were raised to believe. That they, except Hitler, were following orders. Blah blah blah. 

It's understandable that Hoffman would do this and not give the Nazis a redemption story. Let's not make sinners out of saints, especially the worst ones. But it makes for tedious reading to read from the points of view of characters who made those choices in life and have to face the consequences in death without realizing why those consequences are so important. Perhaps it might have been better to use Gottchen's point of view though it wouldn't have been as much of a writer's challenge. 

 Since this is the first book in this particular series The Fuhrer's Master, it makes one wonder how far Hoffman will go with writing about the Nazis. Will she make them more hateful? Continue the middle ground in making them understandable but not empathetic? That can only be stretched so far. Or will Elyse Hoffman do the impossible? Will she redeem the irredeemable and should she?