Max and Helen

Max and Helen: A Remarkable True Love Story
1982
Weight: 12.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

I guess it will be no surprise that this is a challenging and painful telling of the experiences of a couple and those around them in the concentration camps of WWII, as well as a glimpse of their lives before the war and even more of their lives after the war ended.  You can never know what you or would or would not do in situations like these without having lived them, but it absolutely broke my heart into a thousand pieces to hear that Max could not ever see Helen again after he found her, miraculously alive, twenty years after the WWII ended.  He went to her once and realized she had a son whose father was the SS guard that tormented them throughout their time in the camp.  She had been repeatedly raped, and she had somehow showed the courage, strength, and love to raise her son alone to be a kind, compassionate, and passionate young man.  Max, on the other hand, could not look at the boy and so decided to leave them both.  He loved her quietly, from afar, and was never willing to see her again.  I could not imagine her pain.  She carried so much alone and the one man that loved her for her entire life was not able and willing to accept her son and live out the remainder of their lives together.  It just seemed an unnecessary blow after all the terrible cruelty she had experienced in this life. 

Then, there was the agony of the author and "nazi-hunter," Simon Wiesenthal, not being able to pursue and seek justice with the SS guard because it would expose Helen's son to an unthinkable truth and Helen to public scrutiny.  On top of that was the mental prison that Max lived in long after he escaped the confines of the Nazis.  It would seem all unbearable, except that somehow Helen and Max and so many others found a way to bear it, heavily.

Small Sacrifices

Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule
1988
Weight: 8 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

I was working at Waldenbooks in early 2000 when a woman came in to the store proclaiming desperately that this book was her life and that I had to read it to understand her.  I had never met her before, but she pressed a copy of the book into my hands and then bought a copy for her attorney.  She was incredibly emotional and high-strung. 

I bought the book without paying much attention to it.  I was curious, but I was uncomfortable because I knew that Ann Rule was THE true crime author of the time.  I got home and saw the book was about a woman who tried to murder her children, successfully killing one.  I was a teenager.  I was not so sure I should have bought the book.  I hoped that the woman was just a little insane and mostly just a liar.  I put the book away and every time I picked it up I would just put it right back away.  I wondered who the woman thought she was.  The murderer, the child, the prosecution--couldn't be--she said she had an attorney.  Was she just attention-seeking?  I will never know. 

I finally read it this year.  We just moved into a new house, and we have less space even though we like this house better than the last.  We are purging a lot.  I am, of course, still trying to read and let go of all of these books.  There are still SO many.  I knew I wanted to let this one go because of my feelings about true crime and because of all the thoughts it brought up every time I came across it.