The Dressmaker's Daughter

Bücher

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Beautiful, spirited Daniela, 15, is living in Yedinitz, Romania in 1940. She dreams of becoming a doctor, but as a Jew, she is barred from higher education. Her mother, who is dressmaker to a local noble, Countess Kanyadi, hires her a tutor, the rebellious, brilliant, and precocious Mihail, age 18. The two soon begin a passionate affair, unable to resist the powerful love and attraction they share. When the Nazis invade Romania in 1941, Mihail joins the partisans. The count and countess beg Daniela to flee to London with them, but she remains with her parents and brother-who are shot and killed within days. Alone, Daniela is sent east on the notorious Transnistrian Death March, where captive Jews are starved, murdered, and robbed. Daniela becomes a plaything of the Romanian solders, trapped by their depravity, she watches helplessly as her people are destroyed. When Daniela's beauty catches the eye of Romanian Iron Guard commander, Major Dragulescu, he takes her as his concubine and also sends her to nurse Romanian solders in the field hospital, where Daniela cannot help feeling pity at the suffering that surrounds her. She learns that Major Dragulescu has lost his son, and that his wife had died from cancer. Although she cannot forgive him, she feels empathy for this cynical, tormented man. One night Mihail appears with a troop of partisans on a mission to assassinate two key Nazis visiting the major. They are accomplices of war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who is trying to ship Romania's surviving Jews to Auschwitz. Facing mortal danger, Daniela leads the partisans into Romanian headquarters through a secret entrance.What happens next is both heroic and tragic, resulting in Daniela's escape with the partisans, who train her in sabotage and battle tactics. She throws herself into living on the run behind enemy lines, and transforms herself into an effective soldier and partisan leader. Yet, even amid savage guerilla warfare, she dreams of her lost romance and the stolen hours gone too quickly. After the war ends, Daniela's dynamic journey takes her to London then to America, where embarks on a seemingly charmed life, but remains haunted by her experiences, alternately reveling in the intense memories of her love for Mihail, and mourning the insanity of the war that took him away from her.