REVIEWS
“A fictional diary chronicles the experience of a young German woman—a Communist and a Jew—fighting fascism in Spain. When Klara Philipsborn, a German living with her bourgeois family in Berlin, visits Spain in 1925, she experiences a “chemical shift” within herself, falling deeply in love with the place. A budding scientist with an interest in bacteriology, she’s able to secure a position as a lab assistant at the University of Madrid with the help of a referral from Albert Einstein, making her only one of four females out of over 2,000 students. A self-professed Communist with a “Marxist heart,” she becomes deeply involved in the leftist politics of Spain, and when Gen. Franco rises to power, she joins the Fifth Regiment, an “elite army of the people,” to serve as a nurse and translator in the fight against fascism. Meanwhile, Hitler ascends back home in Germany during a time when “logic has been replaced by wishful thinking,” a predicament that threatens her Jewish family, though her father stubbornly refuses to take the danger seriously. Berlowitz structures the entire tale as a series of journal entries composed by Klara replete with personal photographs—this generates an intimacy between the reader and Klara that results in a gripping immersion into the tale. The quotidian details of the entries and the granular accounts of the political scenes in both Spain and Germany, however, often slow the narrative to a crawl. Klara’s experience of alienation is deep and profoundly moving. Unable to return home and live openly as a Jew, she feels compelled to hide her religious identity even from her compatriots in the Fifth Regiment. Her sense of utter outrage seems to sustain her except when it is overcome by episodes of despair and hopelessness, a poignant inner turmoil that, more than political drama, is the core of the novel.
An affecting, historically astute novel.”
—-Kirkus Reviews
“With passionate commitment and conscientious research, Judith Berlowitz shares the story of her relative, Klara Philipsborn, a German-Jewish refugee who flees to Spain and ultimately enlists in the storied Quinto Regimiento in defense of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War.
Klara’s diary entries form a novel, Home So Far Away, which adds an important real-life narrative to the neglected history of the war against fascism in Spain. The inspiring life of Klara and of her Communist women comrades also serves to illuminate the events that led up to WW II, providing many parallels to today’s political climate with its growing threat of right-wing authoritarianism. Stories such as Klara’s need to be told, today more than ever, and Judith Berlowitz tells it with a gripping intensity that will catch you up and help you to understand this era in very personal, human terms.
The title Home So Far Away suggests a refrain from the song of the Thaelmann Battalion, the German anti-fascists who fled the concentration camps of Hitler to join the International Brigades, and who sang, “Far off is our land, yet ready we stand, we’re fighting and dying for you … Freiheit!” The novel helps us to understand the common motivation of Klara and these other internationalists, who fought against fascism in their own homes while defending democracy in a faraway land.
As a daughter of an American Volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, as I read the book, I found the author and her relative Klara becoming part of my own extended family, the international family of all those who went to Spain to try and create a better world. They showed us how to do it!!”
—Nancy Wallach, Board of Governors, ALBA, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
“Judith Berlowitz’s Home So Far Away is like stepping into an Ernest Hemingway novel, with Kristin Hannah whispering in the reader’s ear. Klara Philipsborn is a German nurse whose idealistic political beliefs and sense of adventure lead her to depart the strictures of her privileged Jewish life for pre-WWII Spain just as Hitler comes to power in Germany. Working first in a medical school laboratory, she is exposed to academic life but also to the rising unrest that results in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Caught in the political strife around her, devoted to the war-injured she cares for, and struggling to surmount the betrayals of country, the powers over her, and her emerging and conflicting identities as a woman, a Jew, and a Communist, Klara is tossed in the storms that surround her, threatening her person and profession. This vividly told story, written as diary entries, is a captivating picture of one of the many young foreign nationals who committed their lives to this fraught time in 20th century Spain.
Home So Far Away is the vividly told story of a young German nurse who commits to the Communist ideal in 1930s Spain [and] tosses her identity as a woman, a Jew, a professional and an idealist into the tumult of pre WWII Europe. Written as diary entries with the inclusion of fascinating documents and photos, this meticulously researched novel is a page-turner!”
— Barbara Stark-Nemon, author of Even in Darkness and Hard Cider
“The story of the German “volunteers” (like Goering’s Condor Legion) who fought on the Nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War is well known. Less well known is the story of the Germans who took a stand against Hitler and fascism and volunteered to aid the Spanish Republic. Home So Far Away tells the compelling story of one of these, the only German woman from Schleswig-Holstein to enlist in the Republican cause.
Based on family history, the author has woven together the story of Clara Philipsborn, a communist from a German Jewish family, against the backdrop of Spain’s inevitable march toward civil war. First moving to Spain in the 1930s, Clara becomes a teacher in Madrid. As the civil war erupts in 1936, she joins the renowned regiment of volunteers, the Quinto Regimiento, to put her nursing and translating skills in the service of the Republic. Her story takes place against the backdrop of the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War, which itself was the prelude to the Second World War.
Told in Clara’s words, as excerpts from her diary, Home So Far Away seamlessly weaves history and fiction together into a compelling narrative.”
— Dorian L. (Dusty) Nicol, Economic Geologist, author of “Miss Spain in Exile”: Isa Reyes’ Escape From the Spanish Civil War, Flamenco and Stardom in in 1930’s Europe
Captivating. On the eve of the Nazi rise to power, a German Jewish Communist finds the home she craves in Spain, where she becomes deeply involved in defending the republic. Klara’s passion for life and freedom and the pungent sensual details create an immersive experience. The kind of diary Anne Frank might have written if she had survived to adulthood.
—Kate Raphael, author of Murder Under the Bridge, a Palestine mystery
When a distant relative on one’s family tree suddenly pops up in random and unexpected places – in a book, a newspaper article, and via living descendants, it is a sign. A sign that literary scholar, genealogist, and ethnomusicologist Judith Berlowitz has transformed into a riveting debut novel. Home So Far Away brings the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Nazi Germany center stage. The story begins with a family visit to an uncle living in Sevilla. Klara Philipsborn, a young German Jew, card-carrying Rosa Luxembourg communist and women’s rights advocate, is captivated by this country in which her looks don’t stand out. With Einstein’s help (!), she secures a position as a chemistry teacher/researcher in Madrid and, unable to return to Germany, she volunteers in the civil war as a nurse on the side of the Republic.
Berlowitz’s decision to use the diary form is brilliant. The journals that Klara keeps allow us to understand this complex historical moment in an intimate, human way, through the eyes and ears of an outsider who soon feels very much at home in this land, where she finds comradeship and family among strangers, and where she is able to fight for her ideals. Klara’s voice is pitch-perfect, through wonderful dialogues and emotional reflections about belonging and gender in a nationally-bordered, male-dominated, and antisemitic fascist world. The diary form is a palette for Berlowitz’s meticulous historical research, creating rich and vivid landscapes in which Klara forges a “freedom both from a homeland that does not recognize me as a citizen – as its child – and freedom to choose a home that resonates for me.”
—Rina Benmayor, Professor Emerita, CSU Monterey Bay; Genealogies of Sepharad Research Group
Judith Berlowitz’s Home So Far Away is an absorbing tale: as her heroine Klara moves between a Germany where Jews are increasingly threatened, to Catholic Spain where Muslims & Jews once flourished, her Jewish identity becomes more central, just as it becomes more hidden. A fascinating historical adventure!
—Penny Rosenwasser, author, Hope into Practice, Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears
Set amid the travails of the Spanish Civil War, the Second Republic, and the Primo dictatorship before it, this book portrays one character’s place in Spain’s tumultuous early twentieth century. But it is more. Portraying a woman, who is a Jew, who is German, and who shuttles between Germany and Spain, Berlowitz also ruminates on one’s place in history and the impact that large historical events have on all of us.
—Joshua Goode, Associate Professor of History and Cultural Studies; Chair, Department of History
Claremont Graduate University
The Spanish Civil War was a time when ordinary people did extraordinary things. 35,000 volunteers from 66 countries risked their lives to fight fascism and defend democracy in what has been called the dress-rehearsal for the Second World War, which began five months after the democratically elected government of Spain fell to Franco’s forces. Among those volunteers was Klara Philipsborn, a German Jew and relative of the author. Combining meticulous archival research with compelling literary creativity, Judith Berlowitz tells Klara’s story in the form of a diary, from her first visit to Sevilla before the war to her involvement as a nurse and translator during the conflict. Home So Far Away not only brings history to us on a deeply personal level; it also offers a vital lesson for today and tomorrow about the threats to democracy and the critical role that commitment –ethical and ideological—can play in its defense.
—Anthony L. Geist, University of Washington; Executive Committee, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
“I love historical fiction. And when it's historical fiction in which I can learn something new, all the better. I've read copious amounts of fiction and non-fiction on WWII, but never from this perspective. Each day I apportioned a set number of pages to read so that I could take my time and savor it. I felt like I was receiving missives from a friend I longed to hear from. The book is presented in the form of diary entries, so you get a very unique and personal insight into how and why events happened as they did. In fact, with the addition of newspaper clippings, authentic paperwork, pictures and propaganda, I don't think I've ever read a book that came across as historically accurate and precise as this one. Whenever I picked this book up, I fell into someone else's life and could see, smell and taste everything along with the heroine. The writing is crisp, clear and intense and makes you feel as caught up in events as if they were happening now". I wish more historical fiction could be this immersive and vivid. ***I received a copy of this book from the author. My review is strictly voluntary.”
—dtchantel, BookBub
Upcoming Spanish Civil War Historical Novel by Judith Berlowitz
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
In June 2022, Judith will be publishing her first novel, Home So Far Away. She was inspired to write the book after discovering an unknown relative, Clara Philipsborn, a German member and nurse of the International Brigades. As Judith writes on her website, "I found myself with about 20 documents but no story. Clara needed a voice." And Judith was up to the task.
She was able to transform these few remnants of her forgotten kinship into an exciting and important novel. Written as a hidden diary recorded from 1925 - 1938, we follow Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her German-Jewish family. We follow her from her first time in Seville, then as a teacher living in Spain prior to, and serving as a nurse through the end of the war.
As Eleanor J. Bader writes in her review, the novel "exposes the sexism of the era, and the ways that politically progressive women pushed back against boundaries and restrictions; chronicles the divisions that existed between socialist, anarchist, and communist anti-fascists who came to Spain from around the world; and serves as a dramatic testament to the often-fleeting personal connections that formed between hospital workers as they moved from emergency to emergency."
One Woman’s Spanish Civil War
The Independent, by Eleanor J Bader
When amateur genealogist Judith Berlowitz learned that she had a relative who’d fought against fascism during the Spanish Civil War, she knew she wanted to learn as much as she could about her. The result is a meticulously researched historical novel that introduces readers to Klara Philipsborn.
A nurse by training, German-born Klara began working as a lab assistant at the Medical College of Madrid in 1936. She also joined the Communist Party and when war broke out, she quickly signed up as a volunteer with the Communist-led Fifth Regiment of People’s Militias. There, her medical training and facility with languages – she not only spoke German and Spanish, but was near-fluent in English, French, Italian, and Catalan – led to frequent assignments as a translator of documents and an interpersonal interpreter. She loved everything about both roles. Nonetheless, Klara tells no one that she is Jewish, keeping her background a secret. For the most part, this omission does not faze her; after all, neither she nor her family were particularly religious and a favorite uncle now lived as a Catholic and was fully accepted by the family. At the same time, when she meets other Jewish volunteers, she gravitates toward them, finding an almost-instantaneous connection, an ease of association that she had not known she needed.
But Home So Far Away is about far more than finding one’s cultural grounding. In addition, it exposes the sexism of the era, and the ways that politically progressive women pushed back against boundaries and restrictions; chronicles the divisions that existed between socialist, anarchist, and communist anti-fascists who came to Spain from around the world; and serves as a dramatic testament to the often-fleeting personal connections that formed between hospital workers as they moved from emergency to emergency.
What’s more, the brutality of the Spanish fascists – whose military campaigns began ramping up ahead of similar campaigns in Germany, Austria, and Poland – adds nuance to the story. Similarly, Berlowitz’s focus on the different ways people in the Philipsborn family dealt with Hitler’s ascension gives readers a glimpse into the day-to-day reality of the period. For example, Klara’s Berlin-based industrialist dad refuses to believe he is in danger and continues to run his business, seemingly oblivious to overt – and rising — antisemitism. Meanwhile, Klara’s sister flees to Palestine and her brother and his family head to Denmark before emigrating to the United States.
Berlowitz captures the confusion and terror of the times extremely well and while the story is obviously grim, the sweeping narrative is periodically sweetened with dollops of romance and includes several explicit sex scenes. Suffice it to say that hook-ups are not solely a contemporary phenomenon!
In fact, Klara’s belief in love and her optimism, humanism, feminism, and general chutzpah make her an easy-to-root-for protagonist. And while the narrative periodically gets bogged down in minutiae about rifts between socialists, communists, and anarchists, divisions that seem both frustrating and pathetic 85 years later, this is a small criticism in an otherwise fascinating and absorbing book.
Indeed, Home So Far Away, written as diary entries covering 13 years, 1925 to 1938, gives readers a peek into the Spanish Civil War and the idealism that brought people from across the globe together to fight for democratic governance and human rights. Berlowitz is clearly awed by their commitment and the commitment of her cousin Klara, a woman she never met.
Her evocation of Klara, however, is far from hagiographic. On one hand, Klara is presented as creative, feisty, bold, and open to adventure. On the other, she is overly trusting and is easily manipulated by charismatic male leaders. These factors make Klara wholly real and wholly recognizable.
Illustrations – photos of the real Klara Philipsborn and her extended family, reprints of news clippings, and graphics created by leftist factions during the war – give Home So Far Away added heft and provide an astute and moving look at the anti-fascist resistance that preceded World War II. All told, it’s an inspiring, insightful, and evocative read.