A review of the novel “Crooked Cross” by Sally Carson
The provenance of this novel is particularly interesting. Sally Carson was a young English woman (she was 32 in 1933) who spent holidays in Munich during the early 1930s and her book was first published in 1934. The work was acclaimed at the time and indeed staged as a play in 1935 and 1937 as Germany became a Nazi state (the title is a reference to the swastika). Carson died of breast cancer in 1941 and her book was later forgotten. It was only in 2024 that it was reprinted by Persephone Books which reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century.
“Crooked Cross” is the fictional story of a working-class German family set over only six months, from Christmas Eve 1932 to Midsummer’s Eve 1933, a period when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, his party effectively took control of the Reichstag, Dachau was opened, and Nazi repression of Jews and political opponents intensified.
The Kluger family consists of the two parents and three off-spring in their early 20s, Helmy and Erich who join the Nazi Party and Lexa who plans to marry her Jewish boyfriend. The novel subtly and fluently explores why young Germans flocked to the Party, how the net tightened on the Jewish community, and the power of love when all around hate is on the rise. It must have been a chilling read at the time and now it is a opportune reminder of how totalitarianism can appeal to the disaffected.