It’s easy to find books written by Holocaust survivors, people who have, through luck or skill or both, escaped death and, after the war ended, have been able to build remarkable lives, and I have read many of them.

Their stories follow a pattern: we were a normal family and I had a happy childhood, and then all hell broke loose, and I was sure I was going to die, but then the war ended and, because I had no choice, I built a new life.

But there are other Holocaust memoirs, written from different points of view, such as those written by children of Holocaust perpetrators. There are fewer of those, and the patterns are less consistent. For that reason, when I picked up Liesel Appel’s The Neighbor’s Son, I was not sure what I would find. Having read the book over the past few days, while I can tell you her story, I am baffled what to make of it. It is so unusual.

Lisel was born in a small central German town in 1941 to a mother well into her forties and a father in his 50s. Her only brother was 20, and in the German army, and her parents decided on a second child in response to Hitler’s plea to German women to be fruitful and multiply.

Liesel’s father was an active Nazi, who assisted his old friend Erich Koch (Google him) make East Prussia Juden-frei, taking charge of rounding up children. Liesel’s mother strongly supported her husband’s activities. Liesel was of course too young to know any of this.

When she was nine, Liesel met her first Jew. It was outside her house, he was a young man, and he introduced himself and told her that he used to live in the house next door, that his parents were arrested and deported, but he was saved and hidden. He told her he remembered her parents and she invited him in to see her mother.

Chaos ensued. Her mother kicked him out of the house and punished Liesel for daring to bring “the enemy” in their house. This was 1950.

Liesel’s father had died the year before (presumably of natural causes, although he was awaiting trial for war crimes, something Liesel did not know), and Liesel’s mother was raising her alone. Until the day Liesel met the Jewish neighbor, she and her mother were very close. Never again.

Liesel became a tough kid. Her mother put her in a boarding school in Duesseldorf. She and her roommate had a lot of fun  breaking the rules and ignoring their classes and were kicked out. Liesel at 15 met a law student who was, I think, 24, and had her first romance, telling him she was 18. She was also seduced by her uncle, who was also her gynecologist. She told her mother that, when she was a little older, she planned to marry a Negro.

And that she did. A talent agent from London, whom she met at a house party, whom she really didn’t like that much. But she wanted to get out of hated Germany, and this was her chance.

She moved to London, there were financial struggles, this was not what she imagined for herself, and she had a son. She became involved with London Black society, and she and her husband became very involved with the Congolese ambassador to Great Britain. They became so involved that when Congo’s president Patrice Lumumba was killed and Moshe Tschombe took over, they became very active in the anti- Tschombe movement, leading to her husband’s arrest in Congo, and Liesel’s very, very public campaign to free him.

At this point, she with her blonde hair, considered herself more Black than German, and an active participant in Black revolutionary movements.

Her story then became more strange. She divorced her husband, became involved, had a daughter with, and married another Black man, the third love of her life. They opened a restaurant in London (her revolutionary days behind her), but decided that they wanted a warmer climate and moved to Palm Beach (yes, the immigration problems were overcome with difficulty), opened another restaurant, went broke, and decided to try California. There, her daughter grew up, and she and her husband, after 20 years of marriage, grew apart.

Suffering from depression, she met the fourth love of her life (this one White), decided to marry him about a month after she met him. Shortly before the wedding, her Prince Charming developed a new personality and beat her up. Apologizing, he said he really wasn’t ready for marriage. This led to spending an evening with alcohol and pills in a suicide attempt, and somehow that led to her now ex-fiance getting her admitted to a psychiatric facility, which her daughter helped getting her released from.

Then what? She wrote, for the first time, an article about her experiences in Germany as the daughter of a prominent Nazi, which was published in a major Los Angeles publication.  This led to a call from a rabbi asking her if she would tell her story to his congregation some Friday night. Nervously, never having been in a synagogue and knowing little about the Jewish religion, she did.

And then? You guessed it. She studied and converted to Judaism, became a regular speaker on German-Jewish reconciliation, met a nice Jewish man who became the next love of her life and, as you would expect, quickly married him.

Now, years later, they live a perfect retired life in Asheville,  North Carolina.

What more can I say?