Peter Broner has had a varied career as a novelist, playwright, journalist, psychotherapist, and intelligence agent. Emigrating as a boy from Germany, he fought in World War II against Germany, serving in various branches of U.S. Intelligence. After the war, a bachelor's degree in journalism led to work as a foreign correspondent in Vienna and Frankfurt before returning to the United States to pursue a career in writing. In 1970 he obtained a master's degree in social work and worked for ten years as a staff therapist in a mental health clinic. He continues to maintain a private psychotherapy practice near Hyde Park, New York, where he lives with his wife and two children. Mr. Broner has had several plays produced Off-Off-Broadway and elsewhere, published a number of short stories and has twice won Samuel Goldwyn writing prizes. Night of the Broken Glass is one of several novels he has written.
This powerful, deeply moving novel contrasts the intertwined destinies of three German men who grapple with the Nazi menace in radically different ways. Raised in the mistaken belief that he is half-Jewish, Paul Silver learns at age 17 that his biological father is a wealthy baron, a ``full-fledged Aryan.'' This discovery enables him to join the Hitler Youth, but he later confronts his moral cowardice and, spurning his inheritance, flees to the U.S. and enlists so that he can return to Germany to fight the Nazis. Johann Stantke, an uneducated, gentle streetcar conductor, declares his solidarity with Hitler's victims by scrawling anti-Nazi slogans in public. Sent to Dachau and Buchenwald, he achieves a faith that enables him to survive. Shoe manufacturer Martin Hammerschmidt attempts to subvert an evil system from within; he runs a ``satellite concentration camp'' in his factory, operated by ex-Buchenwald inmates whom he rescues from certain death. A German-born writer who fought against his native land in WW II and now lives in New York, Broner grips the reader from the first page of this remarkable and triumphant novel. Peopled with memorable men and women, it probes ultimate questions of good and evil without becoming schematic. (Aug.)
YA-- An intensely moving novel set in Nazi Germany. Before he dies as a result of injuries received during Kristallnacht , Samuel puts forth the question of how one deals with evil, and three men choose three different means to combat it. Paul, Samuel's supposed son, learns that he is actually the biological son of a German baron but denounces his new ``noble'' heritage. Johann is purposely sent to a concentration camp to join the inmates in their misery and despair. Martin provides an escape of sorts for almost 400 people by subverting the system from within. Deeply engrossing in characterization, story line, and morals, the book will make readers ponder their own courage, ethics, and purpose. --Bunni Union, Geauga West Library, OH
The author tells the compelling stories of three ordinary Germans living under the Nazi regime. Paul, who has been raised as the son of a Jewish father and Gentile mother, is forced to confront his true heritage when his mother, seeking to shelter him, reveals his Aryan biological paternity. Johann undergoes a metamorphosis from streetcar conductor to rebel to concentration camp Ghandi. Martin, a wealthy industrialist, tries to save concentration camp victims by starting a satellite camp in his factory. While lacking the stylized suspense of Len Deighton's Winter ( LJ 1/88), which it resembles, this novel looks into the darker side of the German people's acquiescence to the Nazis. The principal characters, however, overcome their fears to fight the regime, not in any organized resistance, but in deeply personal and effective ways. A very absorbing book, recommended for most fiction collections.-- C. Christopher Pavek, National Economic Research As socs. Lib., Washington, D.C.
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