The Boy with The Star Tattoo, Talia Carner, author; Carlotta Brentan, narrator
Many of the books recently written are not straightforward. This is no exception. It goes back and forth in time and covers the lives of many characters at the same time. It is often hard to thread the varied themes together in a coherent way, until the end.
This book is based loosely on some true historic incidents. In 1969, the reader meets Sharon Bloomenthal. She was raised by her grandmother when her parents were killed during Israel’s War of Independence. Now, a twenty-year-old Israeli, she is mourning the death of her fiancé who had been an officer on the Dakar, a submarine that went missing and had not been found. The reader also meets Daniel Yarden, a Naval officer. He recruits Sharon to help him with a secret Israeli military mission in France called The Cherbourg Project, code named Operation Noa.
Daniel is actually the boy with the blue tattoo on the bottom of his foot. Daniel’s father is Uzi Yarden. In 1946, Uzi worked for the Youth Aliyah, an organization that searched for orphaned and abandoned Jewish children after World War II. Sharon’s mother, Judith Katz, at age 17, was also smuggled to Israel by the Youth Aliyah. Sometimes the children went with the people who worked for that organization willingly, sometimes they begged to go, and sometimes they were forced to go with them. Essentially, some were “kidnapped” so that they could be returned to their Jewish faith and people who would love them in Israel. Often, the Church impeded their efforts, not wanting to lose these children who were now essentially Christians. Because so many years of war had passed, there were some parents who loved these abandoned children and did not want to give them up. In other cases, the children were truly rescued because they were living in dreadful conditions like slaves.
When Sharon discovers that Daniel was rescued like her mother, and realizes they are both really orphans, she becomes obsessed with finding out more about his past and the possible existence of his relatives. He, on the other hand does not want her meddling into his affairs. She is nothing if not persistent.
In France, Sharon works on the secret mission of the Israeli Navy. They are attempting to smuggle out the missile ships they bought from France because although they had been bought and paid for, because they carried weapons, France had imposed a weapon’s embargo and would not release the ships to Israel. A secret arrangement was made to sell the boats to a fake company in Norway. If this was discovered before they could complete their effort, it would cause a major diplomatic crisis. Actually, if it was successful, there would also be a crisis, but it would be for a good reason, Israel’s security.
As Sharon’s life and Daniel’s life grow closer, she refuses to stop investigating his background, and the story moves back and forth in time from 1946 to 1968. At the same time, she juggles family issues with her grandmother and her responsibilities in France for Israel’s security. Often, she seems to have a job that is more important than it is, and often her behavior is disappointing. She is too concerned with other people’s lives. She calls herself a busybody and a yenta, but neither term adequately describes her arrogance as she defies requests made of her and breaks promises for reasons that seem to satisfy herself more than others. She believes her chutzpah is an asset, but I felt it was simply supporting her hubris. She seemed arrogant and impertinent. I did not like the stereotypical way in which Jews were depicted in the book. Uzi was unkempt and dirty. Sharon is an impudent meddler in other people’s business. The Youth Aliyah seems like an illegal organization stealing children rather than a necessary organization after a war that decimated European Jewry and left a multitude of orphans. The IDF might have been doing something illegal, but they were reacting to the two decades of war that had been foisted upon them by their Arab neighbors.
It is important to recognize that most of these orphaned children had been given away or hidden by their parents because it was the only way for them to try to save their children from torture and impending death at the Concentration Camps set up by the Germans. They knew they could not save themselves, but they tried desperately to save their children. In fact, two thirds of European Jews were tortured and murdered by the Germans, their collaborators and accomplices. The Youth Aliyah organization and others like it were necessary to preserve the surviving members of the Jewish faith.
It is also important to know that the idea that the Germans did not know about the heinous treatment of Jews is simply laughable. In many cases, they turned Jews into the authorities and knew they would simply disappear. Then they moved into their homes and stole their belongings. If and when any Jew returned, generally these people threatened them and never gave back their belongings, rather they chased them away. Those who had been tortured for years by people who called themselves Aryan, were further abused by those Aryans when they returned. They were also abused in other countries besides Germany. Poland was notorious for not allowing the Jews to return to their rightful place in society. Israel was and is now, more than ever, the only hope that Jews have to survive in peace. Antisemitism is still alive and well. Further, I consider the rescuing of the hidden Jewish children a mitzvah. Although the tactics may have left a lot to be desired, the circumstances dictated them!
I thought the book would be more about the reason for the blue tattoo, more about details of the war and its aftermath, but instead, it became sort of a romance novel, perhaps better suited for a young adult audience.