Summary
This book is based on a true story and my copy does contain a lot of photos, documents and letters of that time.
The story is set in 1943 in Nazi Germany. It evolves around two women who couldn’t possibly be more different. On the one hand there is Lilly Wust, unburdened, naive, married to a german soldier, mother and housewife and on the other hand there is Felice Schragenheim, brave, ballsy, snappy, out of the closet lesbian and above all...a jewish woman desperately trying to survive in Nazi Germany. While Lilly (Aimée) is not satisfied with her life and her husband, she tries to be the perfect german housewife. One day Lilly and Felice meet and it’s almost love at first sight. They date and court each other, writing love poems and letters and even negotiate a marriage contract. All this time Lilly doesn’t know that Felice is jewish until she tells her this secret. But instead of leaving her, the bond between them grows even tighter than before. Unfortunately their love story is set to a dramatic end when Felice is arrested on august 21th 1944.

Review
I read this book some years ago but I still remember how deeply moved I was. I did know about the Nazis and what happend at that time but noone ever really talked about homosexuals during that period and I might have guessed what it was like but I didn’t know anything for sure except that it was forbidden. Well, the book changed that.
I was amazed by Felice because she was such a powerful and brave woman. I admired that they dared to fall in and live their love under these dangerous circumstances. They did everyday things like picknick or going out...It must have been a beautiful time for both of them as long as they forgot where they were...
But the story also made me cry really hard when it came down to arresting Felice. From this moment on I couldn’t stand Lilly anymore. She desperately tried to find Felice and even tried to visit her one time at Theresienstadt, bringing all the attention to Felice whilst doing this. One doesn’t know what happend to Felice, she might have survived, but it’s more likely she died on one of the death marches.

The book was filmed as a movie too, starring Maria Schrader (Felice) and Juliane Koehler (Lilly). But I’m not sure wether it was dubbes/subtitled into english or wether it was just published in german.

This book broke my heart in a way no other book has. God.

This was an interesting, non-fiction account, of two women in love, one Gentile, one Jewish in Nazi Germany during the last years of WWII. I think it was particularly good at showing how pervasive National Socialism was among the “normal” folk of Germany. I think Americans often assume “it couldn’t happen here” or “it couldn’t happen again” and they don’t understand that Hitler’s rise and the subsequent atrocities happened neither overnight nor in a vacuum. I did find the structure of the book a little difficult to follow at times, but definitely this is a worthy true-life account of the period and its complexities as focused on two lives and I am glad I read it.

I finish reading now with a heavy heart. I had seen the movie before, and knew what was coming, but that doesn't stop the sadness.

I'm glad I was exposed to this story in that order, film then book. The movie was a wonderful testament to the love and pain they shared, and then the book adds more nuance and establishes their story in the greater narrative of the war really well. The movie ends when Felice is taken, and yet for me the part of their story that pulled on me the most was the desperate and terrifying time in which they were in contact after Felice had been taken, which the book chronicles really well.

I think many others have commented on how Lilly is portrayed, and I have thoughts on this as well. It does feel at times that she wasnt receptive to what Felice was going through, and the comments from others show this too (her initial lack of understanding of what was happening, others commenting that her persistence may have called unnecessary attention to Felice in the camps, or after the war, that "she imposed herself" on the Jewish community in her wishes to join). I don't know what we really can say or have the right to say, as readers. This book contains some of their most intimate writings, and yet we must acknowledge that we cannot possibly know how it really was at the time. There are definitely some things that bothered me about Lilly, but I think all I feel comfortable saying is that it is clear she loved Felice deeply and imperfectly, and sometimes that is all a human can do.

"I'll find a star in the sky that maybe you can see too, and it will bind our two souls together."

Wow. What a powerful story. I'm still in awe over what I just read. The struggles these two faced during WWII, living as two gay people in Nazi Germany, it's just heartbreaking to read. What's even more difficult to read, in my opinion, is how much Aimee (Lilly/Elisabeth) struggled in the decades following the war, with no rights and no money.

This quiet book needs to be read by more people out there. Aimee and Jaguar's story needs to be heard by others. It is not a story that should ever die.

This is an awful review, but I'm still processing everything I've consumed over the past 24 hours. Bottom line: the writing can be a bit shaky at times, but I HIGHLY recommend this book to all.

As with any WWII story involving a Jewish person living in Germany, it's bound to be sad. I felt connected to the characters, but the author's style really made this a tough read. The story was set up like a documentary, only in book form. There would be bits of prose, excerpts of diaries and letters and then straight dialogues from interviews. These elements were not synthesized in a way that made reading it enjoyable.
This is a story of a young German mother who meets a Jewish woman and begins to house her. They fall in love rather quickly, since Elisabeth (or Lilly, or Aimée) was unhappy in her marriage to a Nazi soldier. Felice (or Jaguar), the illegal Jew, lives happily with her lover until, of course, she is captured by the Gestapo. The struggles that follow, and Lilly's brave attempts to help Felice make up the bulk of the story. Reading about the lives of Jews in Nazi-era Berlin was of course depressing, but the most chilling part of this read came at the very end, where the author describes the living conditions of a hopeless, possibly deranged Lilly in her old age.
Perhaps a WWII enthusiast would better enjoy this book, but again the writing style just didn't do it for me.

Beautiful but tragic love story, which ending was like the character was dying slowly for the rest of her live.