(Contains spoilers but is a historical novel)
Pictures taken moments before disaster: The cover photo, a tender moment between young lovers, was taken a few hours before the woman in front was arrested and sent to Theresienstadt.
This, a true story, and including witness testimonials.
Fischer weaves their history with a novel's cadence, and though you feel for these characters, especially Felice, the author does let reveal the bias of history and unreliability of witness, this is the story of two lovers in a time of crisis, and without the required empathy they seem: one woman too impulsive in love, passionate, Romeo Romea and Juliet, the same youthful passion and ... just absolutely horrific tragedy:; what I mean it makes them human. Si questo è un uomo.
Outside from the movie, which just concentrates on the romance timeline, the book includes Felice's childhood, as best Fischer could cobble together, as her Jewish life in her hometown of Berlin slowly but very visibly changes; and the lives of European Jews; and her constant tragedies of timing -- for example, when she finally was able to book emigration papers early in the war, her departure date was only five days after all diplomatic relations broke down with Germany and the outside world.
During Felice's time in the concentration camps, the novel focuses on Lilly, of whom we have more documentable history. It makes an interesting atmosphere but I think I understand. But you have to admire Lilly's bravada at least. Who walks right into Theresienstadt, right up to the head guard? Just.

Felice Schragenhiem was only spared the gas chambers by a few months. She died of exhaustion, at 22, being forcibly marched away from the liberating front somewhere between Auschwitz, Belsen-Bergen, and Gross-Rosen, sometime in December 1944. Auschwitz would be "liberated", those that were left, in January 1945.

Such a human love story, I feel like, in the Watch the Ends the Night, just , the human story of the citizens living in wartime, yes in the land of the "enemy", but their human condition.
The book includes photographs and documents, including the two photographs, the only two of them together, taken just hours before Felice's arrest; and Lilly 45 years later.
The are all very hard to look at.

It took me so long to finish this book because it just made me so angry. And so sad. But these stories must be read, and must be remembered.

“It makes me sad sometimes,” Lilly says. “Now it’s no longer my story”

Das Buch is ja ausgezeichnet, aber ziemlich elend.