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fictionfromafar · 2 years ago

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Ashes In The Snow by Oriana Ramunno

Ashes In The Snow

By Oriana Ramunno

Translated by Katherine Gregor

Harper Collins Publishers

14 September 2022

“This whiteness made Auschwitz look like a remote suburb in the snowy mountains. In some spots the floodlights dispersed the shadows, in others, the darkness solidified turning parts of the camp into a asphalted mass, and yet the atmosphere was still fairy-tale like.”

Ashes In The Snow is a haunting, emotionally dynamic and poignant mystery set in the Auschwitz concentration camp over Christmas 1943.

This is the first novel by Italian author Oriana Ramunno. Born in Melfi in 1980, she has previously written crime novellas and short stories. Ashes In The Snow is her first novel which was inspired by the story of her great-uncle who was detained at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. As she writes in her forward “along with the painful tales of hunger, death and abuse, there was also a glimmer of light, he told me of the German commanders who secretly tried to help”.

Late December 1943 a young Italian Jewish boy called Gioele Errera who is imprisoned at Auschwitz discovers the dead body of SS Doctor Sigismund Braun in his office. Despite appearances suggesting his death was due to an accidental choking, renowned young police criminologist Hugo Fischer is despatched from Berlin to establish if that was the case. Thus the reader is provided a view of an outsider to Auschwitz who is only expected to remain there for a day or two and is largely unaware of the horrors that take place there.

His eyes are immediately opened as by a train load of prisoners arriving at the same time as him, it become clear that they have been made to travel in appalling conditions, that families will be separated and never see the luggage they carefully packed before making the trip. A particular brutal scene scars Hugo’s arrival and the reader’s introduction to Auschwitz. While many will understandably feel daunted reading a novel set in such a terrible place, Ashes In The Snow is not only a highly impressive crime mystery but it does also feature both the negative and the positive sides of human behaviour while the horrors are provided to give context rather than for shock value. In fact the novel packs in a very large number of issues and has clearly been highly researched by the author to reflect the attitudes and beliefs that existed at that time. .

Hugo is a rounded character who graduated at university and became a criminologist working for the Reich’s criminal police who reluctantly joined the Nationalist Socialist party and his backstory includes helping capture Otto Hampel & Elise Lemme, the real life couple who wrote postcards denouncing Hitler's government and left them in public places around the city as fictionalised in the Hans Fallada novel, Alone In Berlin. Hugo holds a concealed hostility to the Nazis but also hides a debilitating condition which would not be tolerated by the regime if made public. This gives him a limp that he claims was caused by polio and other side effects which requires him to take morphine to control.

Hugo has to report to sinister camp commander Liebehenschel who asks him to use every technique available to discover if Braun was murdered including outdated theories such the image of the killer being formed on the retina of the victim’s eye remaining fixed after death and the Lombrosco theory that criminality is inherited and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by the way they look.

He has to report to SS Officer and physician Tristan Voigt who borrows the genuine phrase referring to Auschwitz: “anus mundi” from Heinz Thilo a historical figure who was involved in the selection process in the infamous location. Voigt comes across as a ruthless man yet eventually begins to show a touch of humility. Hugo encounters a range of German officers and medical staff who appear to be concealing the unspoken by implying there are terrible secrets taking place. When Hugo insists that Braun is given an autopsy he encounters the resistance of his wife whose father is a senior member of the SS. Her main objection is that the procedure would need to be carried out by a Jewish doctor. Just like the snow, a dead body may appear natural on the surface but something dark could be covered underneath. This autopsy provides him with access to some of the more valued Jewish inhabitants of the camp, as his investigation also brings him in contact with young Gioele and other medical subjects of doctor Josef Mengele, another real historic character known by the German soldiers as ‘the angel of death.’ When the highly perceptive and intelligent Gioele requests a favour in return for information, it forces Hugo to look deeper in the camp’s horrors.

With the entire novel being seen through Hugo’s eyes, he witnesses contrast between the relative luxury and obtained possessions held by senior officers, their social events, the tolerated drinking den and brothel and the very worse activities carried out at the camp. He has to weave between the complex interpersonal relationships between the SS officers and medics to discover not just who killed Dr Braun as well as undercover what the motive was, without making enemies.

This is an engrossing read in a claustrophobic environment translated perfectly by Katherine Gregor. Overall Ashes In The Snow is a highly impressive debut which vividly portrays the sights, sounds and smells of a concentration camp as well as a very nuanced view of the type of characters who worked and were detained there. Thankfully the novel does simplify it into a story of the capturers and the captives, there are some agreeable and disagreeable people amongst them all, naturally Hugo Fischer is one of the former. Solving the mystery of the doctor’s death is one thing, but when he uncovers so much more besides he faces a dilemma with to a truly gripping personal story tied in. In a desperate situation it does show two human natures prevail most, one of several perseveration and one of trying to do the right thing even through small actions. This is a real standout novel and highly recommended. There is potential scope for a follow up novel, I definitely look keenly to see what comes from Oriana Ramunno in the future.

Thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for an electronic copy of Ashes In The Snow.

#crime fiction #crimeintranslation #historocal fiction #novels in translation #european literature

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