Shadow of His Hand || A Review

Shadow of His Hand is the sixth book in the Daughters of the Faith Series by Wendy Lawton. It was published by Moody Publishers, and copyrighted in 2004. Shadow of His Hand can be found on the Moody Publishers website at www.moodypublishers.com .

Shadow of His Hand is a story based on the early years of Anita Dittman, during the Holocaust and the Nazi rule in Germany. It is set around the early 1930s to the late 1940s.

Anita Dittman is a young Jewish Aryan (white) girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina, and greatly desires her father’s love and acceptance. She has one older sister, Hella, who is unquestioningly loyal to her father. Their loving mother, Hilde, is a Jew, though only by name and birth. Their father Fritz is an Aryan who favors Hella over Anita, and who wishes he had never married a Jew who could not even give him a son.

Anita and Hella

The story begins when Anita is five years old. She lives for her dance classes and performances, and, in her mother’s words, is “a bundle of energy and creativity”. Though Anita always tries to draw her father’s attention and love, she can sense his rejection of her every time she is near him as he shoos her off and pushes her away. Her sister Hella, on the other hand, he never pushes away. Fritz loves Hella, and Hella returns that love by defending him, no matter what he does or says. Even when the day comes when he must join the Nazi party. And even when, because of his wife’s Jewish status and his daughters’ half-Jewish status, he turns his family out of his home.

Thus, Hilde, ten-year-old Hella, and five-year-old Anita are forced to move to an apartment. Though every day that passed brings more rules and more regulations to the Jewish people, the Dittman family somehow manages to make do with the times. Many people come alongside them and secretly supply them with companionship and basic needs. One such person is a lady who shares their apartment building, Frau Schmidt, and who always seems to have food to share. The Menzels were German Catholics who also live in the same apartment building as the Dittmans. Despite personal danger, they welcome the Dittmans into their home and into their lives, and their three children become friends and playmates with Hella and Anita. Kind people like these are a reminder to Hilde that not all Germans agree with Hitler. And through all of her fear and disappointments, Anita clings to one of her only sources of comfort, a much-mended but dearly-loved Teddy bear.

Life for the Dittmans follows some sort of a routine. They learn to treat each day as a game with lots of rules: keep your head down, anything said at home is not to be repeated to anyone, don’t talk back or defend yourself, don’t speak of your father, and don’t draw attention to yourself... let the shadows cover you. Anita likes the thought of the shadows hiding her, and it becomes her favorite part of the ‘game’.

On Easter Sunday, the Menzels invite Anita to join them for Mass. Her mother, being a theosophist and having left the Jewish faith long ago, agreed, to Anita’s great excitement. During the service, as the priest tells of Jesus’ life, Anita follows the story on the pictures displayed on the beautiful stained-glass windows, and they seemed to come alive to her. The priest reads a verse out of Scripture that says that God would never leave nor forsake, and Anita knows that God is her Father. As she finds the arms of a Father more familiar than her earthly one, Anita is filled with peace knowing Jesus will protect her and that God will hide her in the shadow of His hand. When Anita tells her mother and Hella that she has found Jesus, they do not believe her. But that does not take her own faith away. She pours all the excitement of her day to her beloved Teddy, and rests peacefully with the knowledge of a Father who will never leave her nor forsake her.

One Saturday, Hilde informs Hella and Anita that they will all be attending St. Barbara’s church the next day, for she had heard that the pastor there helped Jewish people obtain visas and passports out of Germany. While Anita is overjoyed to go to church once again, she does feel great disappointment that her mother is not going to church to find God, but rather to find escape. Hella is shocked, and frightened at the possibility of leaving Germany. While Hella pays little attention during the church service, Anita is overjoyed and finally feels like she has come home. After the service, Hilde introduces herself to Pastor Ernst Hornig and explains their situation to him. He promises to visit soon, and he does, several times. On one visit, he brings them each a Bible. On that same visit, he explains salvation to Hilde, who becomes saved that very day. Still, Hella remains unsure and unbelieving. Pastor Hornig makes a way for the Dittmans to apply for passports, and assures them of their arrival through the mail.

The day a letter does come, it is an unexpected and unwelcome one from the Gestapo, directing them to relocate to an address specified within the letter. As they move to the ghetto, they find themselves in the first step of the Nazi’s plan: gathering the Jews together. Not being able to afford to take much when they move, the Dittmans are forced to sell many of their belongings. Here a sorrowful Anita must give up her dear Teddy to the rag pile, who is too large to take along and too far gone even to give away. When passport mail does finally arrive, they find it is only for Hella. Painful as the separation would be, Hilde is convinced that Hella must get out while she can, hoping that more papers for herself and Anita would soon arrive. As a frightened Hella boards the train which will set her on her on her way to England and away from the turmoil in Germany, Anita wonders “why do I feel like I’ll never see her again?”

Passports for Hilde and Anita never come, but they know that without the strength that comes from God, Hella never could have dealt with the hardships before them. Pastor Hornig is able to find a home for Anita where the lady of the house would provide safe housing, schooling, and books for Anita. Thus Anita is separated from her mother. Anita soon finds out that, though the lady does provide books and schooling, she only wanted Anita there for her ration card. As the woman eats most of Anita’s rations, Anita loses weight and eventually becomes ill. She eventually calls Pastor Hornig, who is sorry she hadn’t called sooner and immediately obtains train fare for her return.

Despite the poor living conditions, Anita is more than happy to be with her mother again, where at least she isn’t overwhelmed with loneliness and malnutrition. As the days progress and Germany enters the war, persecution of the Jews increases. Through struggles at school, open rejections, public ridicule, little food, frequent Gestapo arrests nearby, and separation from loved ones, Hilde and Anita cling to God and witness His provision in food, in finances, and even in the Nazi’s mistake of calling them up to labor in the same factory rather than apart. Somehow, time and time again, life falls into a routine for Hilde and Anita.

Until one day when the Gestapo bang on the Dittman’s apartment door. They tag all the furniture to be confiscated, except Anita’s bed, and arrest Hilde, giving her only three minutes to pack a small bag. Anita is allowed to travel with her mother to say goodbye, but is very quickly forced to leave the makeshift prison where her mother would stay until being moved to a prison camp. Feeling unable to return to an empty apartment not wanting to call her father for help just then, fifteen-year-old Anita goes to visit Pastor Hornig. He tells her that it is still allowed to send food packages to prisoners at Theresienstadt, the camp where her mother would be. This makes a way for Anita to send her mother bread every week, and for them to write a little back and forth. Anita does call her father, who is saddened to hear of Hilde’s arrest and glad Anita called. He gives her the money she needs to buy some furniture and personal items back.

It isn’t long before Anita and a few of her Christian friends are summoned by the Gestapo, as well. Anita sends one last loaf of bread to her mother and hides a note inside so that Hilde won’t be worried once the bread stops coming. She then joins her friends at the train station, where they are forced to board a train to be moved to a prison camp.

While at the camp, the prisoners build defenses against the Russian troops and survive on little food. Here Anita finds out that typhoid fever is sweeping through Theresienstadt and that the situation there is much worse than she had thought. She prays for a miracle for her mother and continues to rely on God to see them through.

But as the Russians advance upon Germany, Anita and the other prisoners receive orders that they are to move out. The guards seem equally as confused as the prisoners, and Anita can tell that they are trying to outrun the Russians. To make matters seemingly worse, what began as a boil on Anita’s foot turns to an aching, swollen, and discolored leg. On her feet working most of the day, the pain and infection only increase nearly to the point of not being able to stand on it any longer, and Anita knows that should a guard find out, it would be over. Also with the Russian advance come heightened persecution and mass killing of the Jews as Hitler tries to hide all evidence of cruelty from the Russian troops. Though the hardships seem to increase, stories of the horrors inflicted by angry Russian troops make the prisoners wonder which would be worse: to remain with the Nazis or be ‘liberated’ by the Russians?

Would Anita’s crippled leg be discovered? Even if Anita survived, would her mother? And would they see each other again? How could God “work all things together” as He had promised in His Word?

Shadow of His Hand is a worthy book that tells the story of a young girl who faced the hardships of the Holocaust with a strength she could only find by hiding in the shadow of her Father’s hand. It shows God’s miraculous provision and His wisdom in using the shattered pieces of a life and molding them into His wonderful masterpiece.

Blessings and Love,

Georgie Grace