History Literature / TheKommandantsMistress

[[TruthInTelevision the countless other Nazi officers who sexually abused Jewish captives despite the dire consequences.]]

* MatzoFever: Max, and to a lesser extent Dieter. To some incredibly {{Squick}}-worthy levels, but they can possibly subvert this because they don't believe Leah is a Jew at first.
** There were laws in Nazi Germany against having marital relations or sexual conduct (even just holding or shaking hands, let alone kissing) with Jews, referred to as ''Rassenschande'' or "racial defilement". It doesn't stop Max, just as it didn't stop [[TruthInTelevision the countless other Nazi officers who sexually abused Jewish captives despite the dire consequences.]]

* SpiritualSuccessor: To Szeman's poem, then short story, "The Kommandant".

* HypocrisyNod: Max preaches of how the Third Reich recruited family men like him who "understood the value of commitment" and "knew loyalty, honor, love". He not only [[YourCheatingHeart cheats on his wife on a regular basis]] but he acts incredibly dishonorable late in his story when running away from [[spoiler:then killing]] the bounty hunter and denying having been in the camps. Oh, and refusal to acknowledge his children's letters or even making any mention of loving or missing them once the Nazi regime has toppled and they've fled but he stays in Europe.

* YourCheatingHeart: Max. It's alluded that he's cheated on Marta several times, and it's quite plain to the reader that there are at least two women he has carried on long-term affairs with.

1992 novel by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman (formerly writing as "Sherri" Szeman) set in UsefulNotes/{{World War II}}, told in a stream-of-consciousness style akin to ''Film/{{Pulp Fiction}}''. Set in three distinct parts, with Kommandent Max telling his part first, Rachel/Leah's side of the story, then the historian's reading of the obituaries. There are three different endings, all three of them are true-- it's up to the reader to figure out why they are told this way.

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!Tropes:

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: A majority of the novel is historically accurate and used [[TruthInTelevision real events]] such as Heydrich's assassination and the Nuremburg rallies where Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels spoke, but {{Word of God}} has stated that she intentionally picked several events with temporal conflicts so that it would've been impossible for Max and Rachel to have attended all of them; so that Max would representative of all Nazis and Rachel representative of all Jews rather than them based on two specific people.

* {{Child by Rape}}: [[spoiler:Leah gets impregnated by Max. Max is unaware of it because she refuses to ever hold a conversation with him and he doesn't come to her consistently enough to suspect it. She makes Rebekah give her a back-alley abortion, and Max mentions seeing blood on the bathroom floor but he's too drunk and apathetic to comprehend where it could've come from.]]
* {{Creepy Child}}: Ilse follows Nazi ideology to a T, but ironically Marta teaches more of it to her than Max. Ilse then takes absurd pleasure in playing games like "Kommandant" where she puts all her paper dolls in the fireplace to mimic sending Jews to the gas chambers.

* {{Grey and Gray Morality}}: Max is not entirely a villain, Rachel/Leah is not entirely a victim. The way they both tell their sides of the story lets you decide what shade of gray each one is.

* {{Lima Syndrome}}: Max to Leah, he was drawn to her the second the train arrived in Auschwitz.
* {{Happily Married}}: Subverted with both Max and Leah, but very subtly. Max and Marta seem happily married at first, but then as both sides of the story unfurl, it's quite obvious that he only married her reluctantly and for putting up appearances. Marta has severe {{Tsundere}} tendencies in that she goes from fawning all over to Max to outright stating she hates him, then begs him to stay with her. The slapping stream-of-consciousness style gives it magnitude.

* {{Hypocrisy Nod}}: Max preaches of how the Third Reich recruited family men like him who "understood the value of commitment" and "knew loyalty, honor, love". He not only [[YourCheatingHeart cheats on his wife on a regular basis]] but he acts incredibly dishonorable late in his story when running away from [[spoiler:then killing]] the bounty hunter and denying having been in the camps. Oh, and refusal to acknowledge his children's letters or even making any mention of loving or missing them once the Nazi regime has toppled and they've fled but he stays in Europe.
* {{Matzo Fever}}: Max, and to a lesser extent Dieter. To some incredibly {{Squick}}-worthy levels, but they can possibly subvert this because they don't believe Leah is a Jew at first.

* {{Nice Jewish Boy}}: David. He's a kind, sweet, albeit jaded man that any {{Jewish Mother}} would love.

* {{Punch Clock Villain}}: Max tries to portray himself and Dieter as this, then he plays this card when evading the authorities under a fake name. [[TruthInTelevision "Just following orders", after all.]]

* {{Spiritual Successor}}: To Szeman's poem, then short story, "The Kommandant".

* {{Your Cheating Heart}}: Max. It's alluded that he's cheated on Marta several times, and it's quite plain to the reader that there are at least two women he has carried on long-term affairs with.

1992 novel by Alexandra Constantinova Szeman (formerly writing as "Sherri" Szeman) set in UsefulNotes/{{World War II}}, told in a stream-of-consciousness style akin to ''Film/{{Pulp Fiction}}''. Set in three distinct parts, with Kommandent Max telling his part first, Rachel/Leah's side of the story, then the historian's reading of the obituaries. There are three different endings, all three of them are true-- it's up to the reader to figure out why they are told this way.

* ShoutOut: Many of the names of poems or books are purely fictional, but the poetry collections and memoirs [[AuthorAvatar Rachel has written]] like ''Survivor: One Who Survives'' and ''The Dead Bodies That Line the Streets'' are real poems that Alexandra Szeman has written.

1992 novel by Alexandra Constantinova Szeman (also known as Sherri Szeman) set in UsefulNotes/{{World War II}}, told in a stream-of-consciousness style akin to ''Film/{{Pulp Fiction}}''. Set in three distinct parts, with Kommandent Max telling his part first, Rachel/Leah's side of the story, then the historian's reading of the obituaries. There are three different endings, all three of them are true-- it's up to the reader to figure out why they are told this way.

* {{Punch Clock Villain}}: Max tries to portray himself and Dieter as this, then he plays this card when evading the authorities under a fake
name. [[TruthInTelevision "Just following orders", after all.]]

1992 novel by Alexandra Constantinova Szeman (also known as Sherri Szeman) set in {{World War II}}, told in a stream-of-consciousness style akin to ''Film/{{Pulp Fiction}}''. Set in three distinct parts, with Kommandent Max telling his part first, Rachel/Leah's side of the story, then the historian's reading of the obituaries. There are three different endings, all three of them are true-- it's up to the reader to figure out why they are told this way.

* {{Artistic License History}}: A majority of the novel is historically accurate and used [[TruthInTelevision real events]] such as Heydrich's assassination and the Nuremburg rallies where Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels spoke, but {{Word of God}} has stated that she intentionally picked several events with temporal conflicts so that it would've been impossible for Max and Rachel to have attended all of them; so that Max would representative of all Nazis and Rachel representative of all Jews rather than them based on two specific people.

* {{Child By Rape}}: [[spoiler:Leah gets impregnated by Max. Max is unaware of it because she refuses to ever hold a conversation with him and he doesn't come to her consistently enough to suspect it. She makes Rebekah give her a back-alley abortion, and Max mentions seeing blood on the bathroom floor but he's too drunk and apathetic to comprehend where it could've come from.]]

* {{Grey And Gray Morality}}: Max is not entirely a villain, Rachel/Leah is not entirely a victim. The way they both tell their sides of the story lets you decide what shade of gray each one is.

* {{Not If They Enjoyed It Rationalization}}: Max portrays the sex scenes as consensual, and even that Leah enjoys it.

* {{Shout-Out}}: Many of the names of poems or books are purely fictional, but the poetry collections and memoirs [[AuthorAvatar Rachel has written]] like ''Survivor: One Who Survives'' and ''The Dead Bodies That Line The Streets'' are real poems that Alexandra Szeman has written.

* {TruthInTelevision: Quite a bit of it throughout this page; as the author based many of the events on historical accounts, actual Nazi correspondence and other documents, as well as several memoirs of Holocaust survivors. She interviewed many survivors as well. See individual tropes for many Truth in Television links.

1992 novel by Alexandra Constantinova Szeman (also known as Sherri Szeman) set in {{World War II}}, told in a stream-of-consciousness style akin to ''{{Pulp Fiction}}''. Set in three distinct parts, with Kommandent Max telling his part first, Rachel/Leah's side of the story, then the historian's reading of the obituaries. There are three different endings, all three of them are true-- it's up to the reader to figure out why they are told this way.

* {{Creepy Child}}: Ilse follows Nazi ideology to a T, but ironically Marta teaches more of it to her than Max. Ilse then takes absurd pleasure in playing games like "Kommandent" where she puts all her paper dolls in the fireplace to mimic sending Jews to the gas chambers.

* {{Even Evil Has Loved Ones}}: Max's pre-Kommandent, and early Kommandent, days he seems full of loving adoration for his wife and young children. [[spoiler:He also has an illegitimate child, Klaus, with his old mistress Diane, [[TruthInTelevision who lived in the Nazi-sponsored maternity home Lebensborn.]] Klaus dies in an air raid in 1944. Max appears impassive in his side of the story but Leah is there when he gets the phone call, and the way she tells it is that he cries heavily after he hangs up. She also finds a poem called "Love Song For Klaus" in his desk, which she mentions in her own book...and Marta demands to know more about it upon reading the book.]]

* {{Spiritual Successor}}: To Szeman's poem, then short story, ''The Kommandent''.