When The World Was Silent

The Secret Locket by Catherine Hokin is a powerful historical novel that I read in just two sittings, pausing only to sleep.

The novel is set in Germany from 1934 to the end of World War II. The action begins in a small village before moving to other locations – Munich, Warsaw, Dachau and more.

Within the village the bully-boy tactics of a powerful man sympathetic to the Nazi party, ruin the lives of the few Jewish residents. We see the power of one man to lie, manipulate, coerce and murder – and the crime of the villagers is to remain silent.

It doesn’t matter that the Jewish family do not practice their faith, their crime is simply being born Jewish. “Nobody would tell her why a faith she rarely practised and rarely thought about had turned overnight into the most important thing about her.”

Catherine Hokin has captured the atmosphere of fear and of liberties being eroded. Far too many fell for Hitler’s lies and had the belief that war was glorious.