A Fairy Tale Unmasked: The Teacher and the Nazi Slaves

A Fairy Tale Unmasked is two books in one. Part One is the story of Dieter Vaupel, a German school teacher who, in 1983, uncovered a hidden past when he and his students began researching what happened in their town during the Nazi regime. The picturesque town of Hessisch Lichtenau was where thousands of slave laborers were forced to work in one of the largest munitions factories in Europe. Vaupel and his students broke through the wall of silence surrounding this history and stood up to threats to leave the past alone. Then, amid further controversy, Vaupel and a group of townspeople contacted former forced workers and invited them to come back to Hessisch Lichtenau. In 1986, Blanka Pudler, who as a 15-year-old girl was sent from Auschwitz as a slave laborer, was one of those who returned. Part Two is Pudler’s account of her enslavement, a story she would go on to tell to thousands of German schoolchildren. In 2012 she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Part One is written by journalist D.Z. Stone and Part Two is by Dieter Vaupel, based on his interviews with Blanka Pudler. This is an extraordinary collaboration that makes for compelling and captiv