A complex narrative about the past, family and living with the consequences of our choices, as well as humanity’s tragic tendency to forget their history and then keep repeating the same mistakes of the past. 

We follow three main stories concerning an immigrant family in San Francisco, with shorter interludes providing more clues as to the displacement referred to in the title. The characters’ lives are intertwined in a matter that, while intricate, is not too hard to follow, specially with the aid of the timelines provided.

The artwork is beautiful and does a great job in detailing the context of each story, as well as informing the narrative through the use of color. Graphic novels work best when both text and artwork contribute something so that the whole is larger than the sum of the parts, and that’s exactly what happened here. I particularly loved the cover, which makes more sense once you’ve finished the book: it references not only the family tree, but also the literal tree that is at the heart of the displacement story.

Recommended if you’re looking for an intricate, emotionally resonant story. 

 

Note: I got this book for review purposes through NetGalley.

Boring, boring, boring novel about Holocaust survivors forging new lives for themselves in post-war Europe and America. I only got through the first four or five chapters before I had to call it quits. Recommended for dedicated readers of Holocaust and post-Holocaust fiction only.

For many schoolchildren, Holocaust survivors were rescued by the Allies, and they lived happily ever after. This is the extent to which history books discuss the plight of the Jews and other political prisoners deemed unworthy to survive by the Nazi regime. Ghita Schwartz’ Displaced Persons disabuses this notion and showcases just what did happen to the hundreds of thousands of people from whom everything had been taken. It is by turns thrilling, thought-provoking, and always informative, as it shows a people continuing to struggle to survive.The end of the war was not just devastating to the people of Germany. For those who survived the concentration camps, the end of the war still meant being detained in camps for those without family or home. In other words, nothing really changed. They continued to be at the mercy of soldiers, albeit British or American ones and without the fear of death. There was little money and little food. More importantly, they remained unwanted, not only by Germans and Polish, but also by Americans and the British, both of whom limited the number of refugees they would allow into their borders. Yet, in spite of this ongoing miserable treatment, people like Pavel and Chaim, Fela and Hinda begin to rise and to recover. Displaced Persons begins to falter once all of the characters make their way to New York. It is at this point in time where their stories become less dramatic and enthralling. What was a fascinating study in sociology and human nature becomes something more mundane as they each struggle to find happiness and overcome the sense of not belonging anywhere. Their stories are told in little vignettes with jumps through time, sometimes spacing several years. There seems to be no continuity to these jumps other than to show how long-lasting the pain of the past really is and how it influences future generations. The details remain murky, as each advance in time comes with the sense of visiting someone you haven’t seen in years but have no time to spend catching up before diving into everyday life. There is an impression of unfamiliarity with each jump that is disconcerting to the reader and interrupting the flow of the narrative. When you have seen and experienced the worst that one human can do towards another, how do you recover from that? The short answer, based on Pavel’s, Chaim’s, Fela’s, and the others’ experiences, is that you don’t. The long answer, as discovered in Displaced Persons, is that recovery means different things for different people. Some became criminals, some ignored the past, others harbored fear or anger or both, and yet others developed a profound need for family and security. While their stories are interesting, Displaced Persons shines brightest when it tells the stories in the displaced persons camps. These are the stories that show how fragile and yet how very strong these survivors truly were. The rest of the novel tends to drag, ruining the impact of what could have been an amazing novel.Acknowledgements: Thank you to HarperCollins and the LibraryThing Early Reader program for my review copy!

Overall, I really liked the writing style of this book, for how calm and clean it felt, especially in presenting the lives of people who survived concentration camps. However, the plot didn't really keep up as well. 

 

The first half of the book really kept my interest, but then it waned a bit, around when left Europe to start new lives elsewhere in the world. I can see what the book was meant to show, but there wasn't much happening in the latter half of the book, which made it hard to keep going. I kept wondering if something new would happen, but it didn't balance out with the earlier plot.

To be honest...this book bored the living daylights out of me! It was one that I absolutely had to force myself to finish, which was sad because I thought it would be totally different.