Jennifer Coburn is an award-winning writer of the travel memoir, WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS, a mother-daughter adventure through Europe. She is the author of six contemporary novels and contributor to four literary anthologies. Jennifer has written for U-T San Diego, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Mothering magazine, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, and numerous other newspapers and magazines. She lives in San Diego with her husband William and their daughter Katie.
Q: Why did the Nazis create the concentration camp, Theresienstadt?
Jennifer: I came across examples of Nazi propaganda that included posters, films, and even board games. After the Nazis codified the Final Solution of killing the Jews, they knew the world would start to ask questions. They understood they needed somewhere to bring the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations to fool them into believing the Jews were living well in Nazi Europe. I wanted to set a story that tells about this camp, including the resilience of those imprisoned there.
Q: What did Theresienstadt represent in terms of Nazi strategy?
Jennifer: The diabolical nature of the Nazis and the expertise they had in propaganda. It worked.
Q: Why do you think Nazi propaganda was so effective?
Jennifer: When the Red Cross came there on June 23, 1944, they had three inspectors with eight Nazi representatives as their tour guides. The camp was beautified: importing 1,200 plants and flowers, building a musical pavilion and playground, as well as converting prisoner housing into a coffee house. As the Red Cross was leaving, the lead inspector supposedly told the Nazi commandant, “Your Jews are living better here than anywhere else in Europe right now, and we do not need to inspect Auschwitz,” which was the Nazi death camp.
Q: Do you think the Red Cross turned a blind eye to what was happening?
Jennifer: They were complicit. They gave the Nazis a nine-month lead time, allowing them to clean up the buildings and transport the sickest prisoners—7,500 of them—to Auschwitz days before the inspection. They even put healthy bodies into hospital beds to create the illusion that conditions were better than they were.
Q: Can you explain your book’s quote, ‘hope is a Nazi accomplice’?
Jennifer: This quote was in the memoir Daughter of Auschwitz by Tova Friedman. She pointed out how the Nazis told the Jews, as they were entering the gas chamber, that they were only going to take a shower. This kind of “hope” calmed people. After reading this, I decided to explore the different roles of hope in the lives of these prisoners. Is it something that is a salvation, or does it placate people to not fight back, or is it both?
Q: Did the character Hilde represent Germans who looked the other way or claimed ignorance?
Jennifer: She did not know that Jewish people were being exterminated. This was hard for me to grapple with because I did not want her to be an excuse for Nazi deniability. Remember, her husband says to her, “If you did not know, you did not want to know.” She represents the German people who were active participants in the Nazi movement. I wanted to show how many were born pure-hearted and were told that Jews were the enemy, leading to a slow descent into madness.
Q: How would you describe Hilde?
Jennifer: An ideologue, naïve, self-centered, loyal, and a malignant narcissist. Someone who was starved for attention and adulation. She craved acceptance from the outside. She was one of the characters in Cradles of the Reich, the first book. She did have misgivings when witnessing Kristallnacht but decided that the others going along with it must know better. She slowly begins to buy into the antisemitism.
Q: How would you describe the heroine, Hannah?
Jennifer: Loyal to her grandfather, anxious, and willing to do what is necessary to survive. She did not want to go to Theresienstadt and wanted to hide instead. She sacrificed herself to go along with her grandfather, who decided to go to Theresienstadt. At that time, she did not have much of a choice because she was raised not to be in direct defiance of her grandfather.
Q: Does Hannah’s grandfather represent Jews who tried to convince themselves things weren’t as bad as they seemed?
Jennifer: The grandfather was based on Phillip Manes, the author of the book As If It Were Life. I found myself frustrated with him because I knew how the story would end—a Monday morning quarterback perspective. He talked about how he refused to look at his time in Theresienstadt as imprisonment. He never spoke with anger or resentment. His diary stops mid-sentence because he was sent to Auschwitz and did not survive the war.
Q: What was the relationship between Hilde and Hannah?
Jennifer: They were best friends as children. Hilde is a true believer. She wanted to save Hannah, not because she realized the persecution and annihilation were wrong. Nope. Her saving of Hannah was a selfish choice because she was only willing to save her, not others. She looked upon Hannah as basically a term called “Pet Jew,” a true saying. She did not want to save Hannah as a human being. Meanwhile, Hannah felt Hilde had made her choice and told her, “I don’t need a savior, I need friends, and you ceased to be one the day you joined the Nazi Party.”
Q: Does the character Misa represent Jews who resisted?
Jennifer: Yes. She was tough, realistic, brave, manipulative, considerate, and caring.
Q: How would you describe Radek?
Jennifer: Kind, strong, confident, encouraging, and courageous.
Q: Was the baby smuggling operation based on real events?
Jennifer: Yes. By the way, Irma, the nurse from Cradles of the Reich, and her husband Rolfe make a cameo appearance because they are involved in the baby smuggling operation. This really took place in Prague, not in Theresienstadt.
Q: Were fake documentaries really made by the Nazis?
Jennifer: There were three attempts in all. The first film was done by Irena Dodalov in 1942, but it was too realistic for the Nazis and was rejected by Himmler. The second film was made by Hans Gunther in January 1944, but they gave up after a day because there was so much suffering. In June 1944, after the Red Cross inspection, using all the beautification efforts made for that visit, they produced a propaganda film.
Q: Did the Jewish director of the last film, Kurt Gernon, represent Jews who collaborated?
Jennifer: Some thought that, but others believed he was such an egotistical artist that he could not help himself. Others thought he was more subversive and did help Jews. The Mourner’s Kaddish in the film was made up by me to show how the Jews there undermined the film.
Q: Was the escape from trains heading to Auschwitz based on real events?
Jennifer: Between 700 and 800 people escaped from transport trains. The weakness was in the connection between the bolts and wood, which allowed them to remove the bars and escape. I changed the setting because the trains from France had the bolts on the inside of the cattle car, but the trains from the East had bolts on the outside.
Q: What can you share about your next book?
Jennifer: It will probably come out in 2027. The working title is The Greenwich Village Fiancé. It is about a beard—a fake girlfriend, Angela—for gay men in the 1950s. At that time, it was very dangerous to be openly gay. A very important character is Jewish. A note to my readers: there will be a Jewish wedding attended by Shel, the brother of Leo, the hero in Cradles of the Reich. Also attending is Gundi, but spoiler alert, Leo, the Jewish resistance boyfriend of Gundi, did not survive.
The Girls of the Glimmer Factory by Jennifer Coburn is relevant considering January 28th was Holocaust Remembrance Day. It takes place at the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp and is a novel about the importance of family, friendship, and community along with the healing power of art and music, finding one’s own strength/courage, and being able to resist, as well as a warning about the power of propaganda. The book alternates narratives between two childhood friends, Hilde and Hannah. Hilde is a true believer of the Nazi ideology while Hannah is now a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt. Coburn’s extensively researched narrative conveys the full horror of conditions at the camp through Hannah’s eyes, not the “show camp” that the Nazis are putting out to the world.
On background, Theresienstadt, the setting for the book, was 3.5 square miles, located in Terezin Czechoslovakia. It was a former military base, constructed in 1790, that was easily converted into a concentration camp. In its 3.5 years of existence 155,000 people passed through, 88,000 were sent to death camps in the East, 33,000 died from starvation and disease, and 34,000 survived.
This book along with the first book, Cradles of the Reich, are compelling, powerful, intense, captivating, and informative. With antisemitism going on in today’s world both are must reads.
