About Unwavering:
From inspiration to heartache, hope is fleeting
as
freedom becomes a distant memory…
Wilhelm Quedlin’s plan to change the tide of the war is thwarted when he is arrested. And, making matters worse, with the arrest of his wife, Hilde, the fate of their children is thrown into chaos. The situation is desperate and the circumstances become even more dire when Q finds out who was behind his capture and imprisonment.
Yet hope remains...
In the midst of their situation, Q and Hilde are encouraged when they meet like-minded political prisoners in the penitentiary and rumors of reprieval make the rounds.
Despite darkness and despair looming in the distance, their hope never fades.
Will they evade the inevitable and come out unscathed by the claws of the Gestapo?
freedom becomes a distant memory…
Wilhelm Quedlin’s plan to change the tide of the war is thwarted when he is arrested. And, making matters worse, with the arrest of his wife, Hilde, the fate of their children is thrown into chaos. The situation is desperate and the circumstances become even more dire when Q finds out who was behind his capture and imprisonment.
Yet hope remains...
In the midst of their situation, Q and Hilde are encouraged when they meet like-minded political prisoners in the penitentiary and rumors of reprieval make the rounds.
Despite darkness and despair looming in the distance, their hope never fades.
Will they evade the inevitable and come out unscathed by the claws of the Gestapo?
Purchase links for Unwavering:
Excerpt from the Author’s Notes:
Most of what I know comes from letters
that Q (Hansheinrich in real life) and Hilde (Ingeborg) sent to their family
members. Unfortunately, the letters the two of them exchanged during their time
in prison were never found.
The letter to Q’s cousin Fanny in America
(in Chapter 44) never made it across the ocean and was later found at the
prison Plötzensee.
I took some artistic liberty with the
person of Werner Krauss. He is a real person who survived the war and was
indeed Hansheinrich’s cellmate, but only for a few months. Krauss wrote a
33-page report about his involvement with the Schulze-Boysen group, which
included several pages about his time in Plötzensee, sharing a cell with my
grandfather. From this report, I have reconstructed their friendship to the
best of my ability.
Pfarrer Bernau, the priest, was modeled after the Catholic
Priest Buchholz and his Protestant colleague Harald Poelchau, who worked both
in Plötzensee and belonged
to
the Resistance.
The Plötzenseer
Blutnächte, when the mass executions were
carried out, happened between September 7 and 12th after a large portion of the
prison was destroyed. Apparently, Hitler had complained about the slow clemency
appeal process shortly before the air raids, but the destruction of many
holding cells might have been the perfect excuse to speed up the killings.
It is not known why Hansheinrich Kummerow
and Werner Krauss were among the few who were spared during those terrible five
nights……
After the war, the family was further torn
apart by politics. Some of them lived in the part of Berlin that belonged to
the German Democratic Republic, the rest in West-Berlin, and the Federal
Republic of Germany.
Hilde and Q’s good name wasn’t completely
reinstated for decades in the Western world because they had the “wrong”
political reasons in their fight against the Nazis.
During the Cold War, it was unthinkable to
commemorate someone who had believed in the ideals of communism and had worked
together with the archenemy, the Soviet Union. This changed only with the
reunification of Germany in 1989.
But it wasn’t until 1995 when a student of
political sciences visited my parents’ house to write a bachelor thesis about
my grandfather. This was the seed for me to start challenging old beliefs and
stoked the desire to learn what really happened.
Thankfully, my uncle had collected all
letters from that era, and I was able to reconstruct much of their lives and
their characters from those letters and other material.
My Book Review:
This
book grabbed my interest from the very beginning. It starts with the main
character, Wilhelm Quedlin known to friends and family as “Q”, being arrested
by the Gestapo. At almost the same time, his wife, Hilde, is also arrested. They
are separated from their two young children who are allowed to go with family. Much
of the story takes place while the two are in prison awaiting the outcome of
their trials and legal pleas.
The
author liberally used letters written between the characters to move the plot
forward. It turns out many of these letters are based on letters actually
written by the people on which these characters are based.
This
well-written story is based on the lives of the author’s grandparents. What a
legacy to leave to their descendants. It leaves me pondering if I or my family
members would have the courage to do what her grandparents did and be willing
to endure the hardships involved in order to work for what they believed to be
best for the future of their country.
This
is the third book in a series. You may read my reviews of the first two books, Unrelenting
and Unyielding,
by clicking on the hyperlinked titles. I definitely recommend reading each of the
books in order.
About
the Author:
Marion
Kummerow was born and raised in Germany, before she set out to "discover
the world" and lived in various countries. In 1999 she returned to Germany
and settled down in Munich where she's now living with her family.
After dipping her toes with non-fiction books, she finally tackled the project
dear to her heart. UNRELENTING, UNYIELDING and UNWAVERING are the story about her grandparents, who
belonged to the German resistance and fought against the Nazi regime.
UNWAVERING is a book about resilience, love and the courage to stand up and do the right
thing.
Visit her blog at kummerow.info or her facebook page at
facebook.com/autorinkummerow
Connect with Marion Kummerow:
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