David Baddiel’s August 2006 release, “The Secret Purposes” made me want to linger with its likeable characters and their human thoughts. The story, based as it is around German Jewish refugees in England, during the Second World War would not usually appeal to me as a subject matter; the atrocities are often harrowing reading. Yet it is always people who make a story appealing and the better we know the people, the more involved we become in what happens to them. “It’s a beautiful life” and “the Pianist”, both stories from that period, are compelling because of what we feel for the people in them.
Baddiel’s book centers on a husband and wife who escaped Germany and came to England with their baby daughter. Isaac, son of a rabbi, an intellectual who believes in communism - in theory, has insufficient command of English to hide this when interviewed by immigration. Although classified as a low threat, he is interred on the Isle of White for the duration of the war. His wife and child are left to fend for themselves and do what they can to secure his release to freedom.
The insight this brings to our own government’s policy of interring refugees, is something that makes this book very compelling. A religion he has all but abandoned caused Isaac to face execution in his own country, then when he thought he had escaped to a secure place, he was separated from his wife and baby, because the country he escaped from is at war with the country he escaped to.
The confusion and resentment this causes is more than understandable. That the people are naïve and make unwise emotional choices though is what holds the attention. A very touching, human book.
Not Rated.