A Thread of Grace

Since my last post was about The Wedding Officer I thought I would talk about this book, which is another look at World War II Italy. This book focuses on the last years of the war when Germany was no longer Italy's ally and Germans and Allied forces were both at the proverbial gate. The features several Jewish families on the run, as well as the people who helped shelter them and an SS doctor who when separated from his unit must come to terms with the blood on his hands for his role in the concentration camps. Reading this book, I learned the Italy had highest Jewish survival rate in Europe, which the author seems to partly attribute to the Italian suspicion of centralized orders and government as well as the greater integration of Jews into the culture as a whole. The book also shows how fascism grew in response the pressure the war put on Italian society.