The Women in the Castle is as much about complicity as it is about resistance. It is a story set at the edges of the Holocaust, rather than at its darkest center—in the gray area of everyday lives. It is also a book about the period after the war rather than the war itself, a time when the guilt of having supported Hitler—of having been complicit in the Holocaust—was driven underground and inward. And this private space of the subconscious and repressed has always been the province of novels.

I have spent the past seven years moving around in this space, considering the questions that have obsessed me from three characters’ points of view: How did the forces of the time shape the everyday moments of people’s lives? How much did “ordinary Germans” know of what was happening in concentration camps and small Polish villages? How did some people recognize evil as it unfolded while others remained blind?

In the German language, there are two words for knowing: wissen, which is to know something truly, in a way connected with wisdom (wissenchaft), and kennen, which means to be acquainted with. If knowing exists on a gray scale, then one of its measures is the stories we tell ourselves.

Even after all these years, I am not tired of reading, thinking, and writing about this time and the stories people told, and did not tell, themselves. I still haven’t explored all its corners. I don’t know everything. These days, I feel its conflicts and parables running beside us with a particular urgency, crashing over contemporary questions of immigration, religion, and climate change, swirling around our political leaders, demanding: Look at me.

Questions for Discussion

1. Compare and contrast the three women of the novel: Marianne, Benita, and Ania. How did their backgrounds—class, family, education—define each of them and affect their outlook toward the Nazis and one another? Did Marianne’s privilege make it easier for her to be an active resister? Why was Benita dazzled by the Nazis’ pageantry? How did Ania’s childhood influence her feelings toward Hitler?

2. Would the three women have been friends if not for the war? How do the events of the war and its aftermath shape each of them and their perceptions of themselves? Though they have numerous differences, what characteristics do they share? While the war brought these women into each other’s lives, was it ultimately what bound them together?

3. Before the war began, Marianne was charged with being “the Commander of Wives and Children.” How does she uphold her duty? A passionate and deeply moral woman, Marianne was certain she always did the right thing. But did she?

4. Do you think the confidence and self-certainty that enabled Marianne to survive also blinded her to her own failings—and to the goodness in those who did not seem to measure up to her rigid standards? Was she a good protector and friend to Benita and Ania?