The Bitter Road to Dachau

August 1, 2005
Adult/High School -Christian Reger was one of the founding members of the Confessing Church, a church that protested against Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. He was imprisoned three times before being sentenced to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was forced to live in the Pastor's Barracks with hundreds of other men of the cloth. There, all boundaries were erased among the different religious sects as each man struggled to live his faith and trust in God. This fictional account of Reger's imprisonment reads much like a biography; each chapter recounts one year of his captivity. As a Christian, Reger not only survived the Nazis' dehumanization tactics, but he also had to accept that his imprisonment was God's will. His struggle to endure under such harsh conditions forces readers to ask themselves the same tough questions about God, suffering, and life itself. Wise's account would make an excellent addition to collections wanting to expand their knowledge of the Holocaust as students will gain a better understanding of the horrors that awaited any enemy of the Nazi party. -"Erin Dennington, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.