The Neighbor's Son

In her moving and beautifully written autobiography The Neighbor's Son, Liesel Appel writes of a lifetime spent coming to grips with her native Germany and its World War II legacy. Born in 1941, Liesel writes that her parents “lavished so much love and attention on me that it helped me to develop in mind, body and spirit.” Her father, in particular, made an impression on the young girl because he “exuded such strength and confidence.” As the war progressed, he always ensured that his daughter felt safe and secure.

But Liesel cannot reconcile her parent’s love for her with their extreme hatred for Jews. “In my ordinary, loving German home I was taught a most deadly culture, so despicable and wrapped up in deceit, that to free my conscience from its impact had to mean to free myself from every German part of me.” As a teenager she flees the pain by running away to England.

Liesel Appel’s honest and sensitive narration illuminates the complex effects that hared, prejudice, and racism have on both victim and perpetrator, but especially on the innocent. The Neighbor’s Son holds hope and understanding for all who have suffered at the hands of hatred, and charts one courageous woman’s road to redemption.

Baby Liesel and her family, 1941

Liesel Appel's book is heart gripping, chilling, and almost hard to believe--that decent, caring people like her parents gave in to the most evil forces and thereby denied even to themselves that they were in fact participating in genocidal atrocities. How is it possible to delude oneself so totally? Her father a much revered educator to boot! Hadn't her parents been taught the basics of an ethical civilization: "Thou shall not kill" and "Treat your neighbor as thyself?"

Liesel Appel brilliantly succeeds in her wrenching endeavor to lay bare the loss of her parents' humanity - despite the fact that she was a coveted and much beloved child, especially by her Papa, the adored hero of her early childhood. In describing this process of dehumanization of her parents and other adults around her, she is unreservedly forthcoming and unflinchingly honest. Not once does she escape into abstract evasions. Besides, this book shows us the nature of her soul stripped down to its very [sweet and caring] essence and thereby she gives witness to her own deep humanity-despite having been raised by deluded, hateful [criminal] Nazis who notwithstanding that they thought of themselves as belonging to the "people of poets and thinkers" abandoned their own judgment of what's right and wrong and discarded any notion of empathy for those they considered THE OTHER. In this process, Ms Appel's parents voluntarily became thugs of the lowest kind. By describing how painful it was for Ms Appel to see her adoring parents for who they were, I want to express my gratitude for her courage to embrace the truth rather than run away from it.

As the daughter of a holocaust survivor, I was particularly fascinated by Liesel Appel's riveting memoir. I grew up consumed by my parents' and relatives experiences, never imagining that children of perpetrators would be engulfed by their own legacy of guilt and responsibility. Liesel's extraordinary journey is the journey of love and redemption. For those of us struggling with minor and mundane changes, Liesel's account of her personal trajectory is utterly inspiring and transformational. Highly recommended!

The Neighbor's Son is a compellingly honest and important work. It is written with both passion and compassion, shedding light on a too little known dimension of the Holocaust legacy on certain members of the German second generation. The concern of some and the indifference of most is attested through Liesel Appel's own witness. I hope that her book appears in German. Also, her description of the prejudice and duplicity rampant in the Palm Beaches of the 80's--and not totally absent today--is right on the mark.

This is the best book I've read this year - it is beautifully written, and the story is gripping. It is 'human' in the best senses of the word. I had tears in my eyes on more than one occasion. I can’t wait for the next one. Liesel Appel knows how to say important things so they can be heard.

Nazis have often become stock villains to those of my generation, born some three or four decades after the last shot of World War II was fired. The Neighbor's Son provides an invaluable perspective. There is evil here, but it's in the last places you will ever expect.

Whether it's a glimpse into the lingering poison hatred leaves even on those barely young enough to remember it, or as a reality check on the severity of the problems we all face, images and scenes from this book ended up staying with me after I set it down.

After reading this, if anyone tells you that your minor squabbles with family or trouble finding an apartment constitutes an existential crisis, please set them straight.

Appel's writing style is sparse, effective and simple. This allows the compelling events of her life to come through.

And on that count, there's practically no end. Even after the fateful visit by her former neighbor, Liesel's life involves her brother's miraculous desertion from the German navy, her own entanglement in the brutal Congolese infighting of the 1960's, racial prejudice and corruption in Palm Beach, and a succession of failed love affairs.

Throughout, it doesn't have the fictionalized feel that many memoirs end up with. Appel readily sees her own flaws and ardently refuses to package the twisted paths of life into easy resolutions. That unflinching honesty gives the uplifting moments the reality they need and the punch-in-the-gut revelations the impact they demand.

Her search, decades-long by now, continues today, as Appel, the last living member of her immediate family, seeks to end her long quest by finding the neighbor's son.

The scenes where she searches on the barest rumor are some of the hardest to read, as she not only digs back through layers of painful memories, but does so with no easy or certain point of resolution in sight.

Life's stories not only are stranger than fiction, but they have a habit of never really ending at all--and who knows what the next chapter will reveal?