Gideon Polya, “Review of “A Billionaire’s Daughter” by Ella Blum (Fast Books, Sydney, 1997 & 1999) (on the back over of the 1999 edition).
“A Billionaire’s Daughter” is an account of the life of a German girl from infancy in the impoverished, inflation-wracked twenties, through school years that saw the rise and consolidation of the Nazis and, finally, as a young woman performing national service during the war years.
This is not only a compelling story about an ordinary German family in an extraordinary period, it is a valuable social history document that provides an intimate insight through the eyes of a young person into German society on its way to carnage and ultimate disaster.
This is a compelling, often highly amusing and immensely readable account of life through momentous times of an unassuming and earnest young woman. The most extraordinary aspect of the story is the very ordinariness and normality of the socialization and social mobilization she experienced during the Nazi era.
The powerful message of this book is that ordinary, decent, socially-responsible people slip so easily into an ostensibly benign social current and are so easily deceived. This indeed is a book for all people.
At the beginning of the new millennium, living in prosperous, educated, free and open societies, let us not fool ourselves that we are not also being remorselessly manipulated, deceived and disempowered.