Night Angels by Weina Dai Randal

 "It struck Fengshan, the brazen core of a man's soul, the depth of a man's evil. If a malignant man like Eichmann would dare to declare his intention to annihilate many lives and demolish a consulate that provided a passage to safety, then men, men of able means, men of faith, men of righteousness, must rise to stop him. This was how it had to be, then. As long as he held the fountain pen, the seal, the power to save people, as long as he was the consul general of the Republic of China, he would sit at a desk and sign, one visa at a time, fighting for other people's lives."   

     -from the novel

I selected this as an Amazon First Read novel. I love heroic stories of WWII and the Holocaust. This one is based on a true account of the "Chinese Schindler," Dr. Ho Fengshan.

As consul general of China in Vienna, Fengshan felt great compassion for Viennese Jews after the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. First, he felt compelled to help a close associate of his and then his wife's friend and her family, all threatened by Eichmann and his henchmen, to leave the country. He realized he could issue visas for them to relocate in Shanghai. As he realized the greater need, he issued thousands of visas over a period of two years, saving many lives. He posthumously received the title Righteous Among the Nations, an honor received by Schindler, as well.

The fictionalized part of the novel was the story of Grace Lee, Fengshan's second wife who is American, as she navigates German culture and language, deals with a workaholic husband and a stepson with whom she has not bonded and faces the horrors of the Nazi occupation. The weaving of the stories of husband and wife makes this a gripping novel. I have rated it a 5 although I am still wondering about the title of the book.

I thought it was interesting, and sad, that when the need for Jews to escape first arose, most countries refused them entry, including our own. Luckily for many, Fengshan did not take a "no" from his superiors for an answer! I was pleased that one of the countries allowing refugees was the Dominican Republic, which we recently visited on a cruise. I learned that the extremely evil Adolf Eichmann was called the "Czar of the Jews" and even more telling, "The Devil's Deputy."