Kommandant’s Girl and The Diplomat’s Wife by Pam Jenoff

Kommandant’s Girl and The Diplomat’s Wife by Pam Jenoff

To me Kommandant’s Girl and The Diplomat’s Wife are essentially both love stories set against a backdrop of war, terror and above all courage. What is remarkable about both of these fascinating books is that the main protagonist is a female.

In Kommandant’s Girl the main protagonist is Emma, a Jewish girl who is forced to assume a new identity as a Christian working at the Nazi headquarters. Here she uses her position as secretary to the Kommandant to gather intelligence for the resistance. Emma risks her life to help her country and in doing so embarks on a love affair with the enemy. Throughout the Kommandant’s Girl Emma is portrayed as courageous and brave, willing to do anything to help the cause at whatever cost to herself and her self-esteem. Many times throughout the book Emma questions what she is doing but still does it.

In The Diplomat’s Wife Marta is the main protagonist. Although we have seen Marta before in Kommandant’s Girl aiding Emma in her escape from the Kommandant and with Emma’s husband Jacob helping the resistance, in this book Marta takes centre stage. This new story follows on from that memorable night on the bridge when fighting to save her friend Emma’s life and to reunite her with her injured husband Marta shoots and kills the Kommandant. We discover in this book that although Marta is very different from Emma she is also very similar. Marta is strong and determined, characteristics that have enabled her to survive the beatings and torture she has had to endure inside the Nazi prison camp.

Marta never approved of Emma’s relationship with the Kommandant especially when she discovered that Jacob was Emma’s husband. Marta was quick to judge Emma for her actions but in The Diplomat’s Wife Marta starts to see things from a different perspective and realises that Emma only did what she did in order to survive. In The Diplomat’s Wife Marta spends a lot of time comparing herself to her friend and realises that they both essentially do things out of necessity and not necessarily free will.

Both books are full of unbelievable horrors – both set in times when the world was an uncertain and evil place. When reading the Kommandant’s Girl you really get a sense of what it was like to be a Jew in Poland during the war. You can picture in your mind how fragile life was and how the Jews quite rightly lived in fear of their lives. You also gain an insight into the work of the resistance and how brave its members were risking their lives constantly knowing that capture would mean torture or death. Pam Jenoff the author of Kommandant’s Girl does a fantastic job of transporting the reader back to the time of the war with her use of description and the fantastic characters she has created, which really bring the story to life and off of the page.

In The Diplomat’s Wife time has moved on. The war is over and people should be celebrating and moving on with their lives but another enemy is rising and making its presence felt in the world – communism. Pam Jenoff takes the reader into another time of crisis and fear by focussing her second book - The Diplomat’s Wife on a time when communism looked set to take over the world and Russia looked to be going to pose as big a threat to the world, if not bigger, than Germany had done during the war.

It saddened me in a way that both Emma and Marta had lost such a lot during the war and were just beginning to put their lives back together again when they were both thrown into the middle of yet another nightmare. As if enough people hadn’t suffered or died now even more people were being arrested, murdered or killed in the name of communism.

Both books appear to have been written with a great passion for the subject matter and about the role of women during these turbulent and disturbing times. Not often do you find women taking lead roles in such gripping dramas such as the dramas unfolding in the pages of these two books.

Marta never understood Emma’s relationship with the Kommandant in Kommandant’s Girl. How could Emma be so in love with Jacob and yet maintain a relationship with the Kommandant? I think what made it worse for Marta was that she was also in love with Jacob, that love for a man she could never have probably clouded her judgement and objectivity where Emma was concerned. Emma never asked to be put in a situation where she would have to be the lover of the Kommandant, it was the resistance who manipulated things so that Emma could spy on the Kommandant for them and find out useful information.

I was struck by my feelings for the Kommandant. Although he was an evil and barbaric man who carried out cruel acts in the name of the Nazi’s I still found myself liking him. I liked the way the author made the Kommandant seem human and likeable with a conscience. He admitted his failings and how he did not always like what he was forced to do. He was never cruel to Emma herself until he discovered the lies she had told him. He said time and time again throughout the book that he did the cruel things he did because he was a Nazi and that he sometimes wished that he did not have to do them. It must have been hard for Emma to have a relationship of any kind with a man who might kill her at any given moment if he found out her secret. I do not envy Emma having to give herself to a man who was duty bound to go about killing people and ordering their deaths. I cannot imagine how it must have felt for Emma sleeping with a man who was the enemy when she was just newly married herself. Yet Emma clearly developed feelings towards the Kommandant. I suppose at the end of the day the Kommandant was just a man and an attractive one at that.

I think over time Emma allowed herself to feel for the Kommandant because it was easier to have real feelings than to force herself to keep her feelings in check. She could be far more convincing a lover if she actually put aside her love for Jacob and her repulsion at what she was doing and acted, then eventually allowed herself to fall in love with the Kommandant. I don’t believe it was ever truly love in the real sense of the word but there was a definite spark between them and I think towards the end that a lot of her feelings towards the Kommandant were genuine. Some might say her role playing and reality had merged into one, others might argue that the situation she was in was one where emotions were running extremely high and it was easier to live a believable lie than live without love and emotion every day.

I personally cannot imagine living in those terrible times being someone like Marta, Emma or Jacob. Living on the edge, always looking over your shoulder. Risking death every day. Trusting no one. In many ways Emma was thrown into a situation not of her making and maybe that is why she comes over as such a likeable character. She fell in love and got married then a few weeks later chaos erupts and the world she knows is in ruins. She knew that Jacob was in the resistance when she married him but I wonder if she truly realised what that would mean to her and her life if the Nazi’s invaded her homeland? Suddenly Jacob is forced to flee for his own safety and Emma is forced to live in the ghetto. Over night she is whisked away, without even being able to say goodbye to her family, to become an intelligence gatherer for the resistance working in the enemies own lair. Jacob and Marta were trained and knew how to look after themselves as part of the resistance Emma on the other hand new nothing of that life; she was quite literally thrown in at the deep end. She learnt as she went along how to survive in a dark and deadly world.

At the end of the book it is almost too good to be true to believe that Emma will return to Jacob, escape the Kommandant and live a normal happy life once again. The scene at the bridge towards the end of the book not only paves the way for Marta’s own epic story in The Diplomat’s Wife but also brings the Kommandant’s Girl to a thrilling conclusion.

The scene on the bridge is poignant for several reasons and is also very moving for the reader. The Kommandant now knows the full extent of Emma’s deception. He knows that she is not who she claims to be and that she is already married. He knows that she is a Jew probably to him the worst thing of all. Although he tells her he loves her he also makes it clear that she has to die. He cannot live with the knowledge that she is a fraud. It is his duty to kill her. It is interesting at this point to see how the Kommandant wrestles with his conscience. He knows that he has to kill Emma but it is clear that a large part of him doesn’t want to. Love is getting in the way of his duty to his country and his people. Pam Jenoff again does a good job here of showing that the Kommandant is in fact human and does have feelings. Emma is scared for her own life and that of her unborn child. She pleads with the Kommandant to let her live. She tells him she loves him and that they can be a family. The baby poses an interesting dilemma for the Kommandant. He can’t be sure that the baby is his, maybe it belongs to Emma’s real husband? It is the baby that eventually forces his hand and helps him be persuaded that Emma has to die. This epic scene seems perfect for the big screen. As a reader you know that one or both of them are not going to make it off that bridge alive. At that particular point in time things could go either way. It is literally impossible to second-guess what will happen. I thought it was sad in a way that it had to come down to a one must live and one must die situation. As Emma walks away from the Kommandant you are waiting for the gunshot and for Emma to die but when the gun is fired it seems to come like a bolt out of the blue. Who is dead, who pulled the trigger? Emma naturally assumes that she has been shot and thinks she is dead. Quickly it becomes apparent that she isn’t dead she is still alive and not even injured. What happens next is for me the really emotional part of that bridge scene. The Kommandant lies dying after being shot. Emma goes to him and comforts him, telling him she loves him. He tells her that he loves her and could never have hurt her. Even though he has just tried to kill her and her unborn child Emma is compassionate and almost appears heartbroken that the Kommandant is dying. Again this is another instance of where the author humanises the monster making the Kommandant seem likeable. I actually felt sad at his death although not a few minutes before he was about to kill Emma. Although the Kommandant said he could never have hurt Emma I think that if he had not been shot first that he would have pulled the trigger and killed Emma as she walked away.

It takes some time in all the confusion for Emma to realise that someone else is on the bridge and that they must have killed the Kommandant. Of course we learn later that Marta pulled the trigger to save her friend. Marta has witnessed Emma’s last moments with the dying Kommandant and has seen the affection between the pair. Emma tries to explain her feelings to Marta but time is of the essence and Marta forces Emma to leave before the police arrive. Marta injured by a stray bullet from the Kommandant’s gun lies wounded on the bridge, her fate unknown. Although Emma escapes and reaches the place where Jacob is staying we are left not knowing what becomes of the pair and if they survive the remainder of the war.

When Kommandant’s Girl was written Pam Jenoff did not plan to write a sequel but over time decided that it would be nice to tell Marta’s story and at the same time revisit some of the familiar characters from the original book.

The Diplomat’s Wife picks up with Marta in a prison camp where she has been since being captured on the bridge. Tortured and beaten she is only just alive when Paul, an American soldier, rescues her from the Nazi camp. He takes Marta to a hospital where a series of events are put in place that will change Marta’s life forever. To be honest maybe I was too wrapped up in the romance between Paul and Marta to notice what was going on and how things were being manipulated so that Marta would end up in England. Was it too much of a coincidence looking back on things that Marta just happened to meet a British diplomat on her journey to England and that he would show her open affection and offer her a job working for him at the embassy? At the time I was too preoccupied with Paul, the handsome American soldier to notice all the signs that things were not as they seemed. In hindsight there were lots of warning signs that things were not quite right or too easy but I as a reader, more fool me, chose to ignore them.

It amazes me looking back on things that someone would go to so much trouble to gain the knowledge that they needed. Luring Marta to England, offering her a good job at the British embassy, proposing marriage to a woman they hardly knew, murdering lots of innocent people and using Marta’s knowledge of the resistance to get people arrested and killed. I guess though that in those times people would do whatever they needed to and by whatever means necessary to gain the information they needed. In the end Marta was nothing more than an expendable commodity in Simon’s eyes. Dava the nurse and Simon’s accomplice was another person who could be used for as long as was needed or for as long as they were useful then disposed of by whatever means necessary. Simon was incapable of love or so it seemed. He knew that Marta only married him to gain stability in her life and a father for her unborn child and he was happy to play along. A ready-made family aided his cover story at the embassy. As for the nurse, Dava, she truly loved Simon and had done for years but he never loved her. He admitted that at the airport, a fact that finally became his downfall. He used Dava like he used everyone else in his life.

When Marta first met Simon on the journey to England I thought he seemed creepy but I never for once contemplated that he would turn out to be a spy. He didn’t seem capable of being a spy. He seemed too boring. Maybe it was the fact that he appeared plain and boring on the outside that made him such a good spy? He worked hard and was always saying and doing the right things in meetings. He never drew attention to himself. He blended in almost too well. When the question of the cipher was first brought up he knew that Marta would agree to go on a mission to recover it, it was part of his grand plan all along but he still acted like a concerned husband refusing to let her go and protesting that it was too dangerous for her, a meagre secretary. It is hard to believe that when Simon first met Marta it was all a cleverly arranged set up. He had intended to use her and her contacts all along. He just had to get her to England and to marry him.

I never for once thought that Dava, the kind and caring nurse from the hospital was actually working for the communists and that she had arranged to have Rose killed so that Marta would be able to come to England using her papers and in the course of doing so meet up with Simon. Once introduced Simon knew that with Paul out of the picture Marta would be in a strange land with no home and no job and would have no one else to turn to in her hour of need but him. So as we later learn Simon arranged for Paul’s plane to crash killing all the men on board. In many ways Simon was just as much of a monster as the Kommandant was in Kommandant’s Girl. In fact to me his actions seem worse. The Kommandant was thought of as the enemy. He was noted for being an evil man. You almost expected him to do bad things. Simon on the other hand was a posh diplomat working in the British Embassy. He had what appeared on the surface to be a perfect life. It is hard to believe that someone as outwardly pleasant as Simon could be a cold-hearted monster. For that reason I think I found myself at the end of the book hating Simon more than the Kommandant.

The brief romance between Paul and Marta seems to span a lifetime not just a few rushed days in Paris and at the hospital. There is such intensity to their passion it is as if their romance will quite literally explode off the page. I did think it was a bit too good to be true when Paul showed up in Paris and saved the day but I shoved my apprehensions to one side and focussed on the overwhelming feelings the two shared. I loved the way Pam Jenoff wrote those scenes with such an intensity and tenderness. Paul was your typical hero at that point – dashing and debonair and full of charisma. His apparent death so soon after those breathtaking romantic scenes was so saddening. I can honestly say I felt like my heart had been torn in two when it becomes clear that Paul is dead. How heartbreaking it must have been for Marta to sit at the station in London and wait for Paul for hours and hours only to read about his death in the national paper of all things. They were engaged but no one knew she existed. I found those words so painful to read. To love someone so much yet all she had left to show for that love was Paul’s dog tags.

Again blinkered by sadness at Paul’s untimely death I, as a reader was perhaps a bit blasé about Marta’s next unexpected encounter with Simon in the park. Was it too much of a coincidence that Simon just happened to be in the park at the same time as Marta was walking in it? You lose your fiancée, have no home and no job and out of the blue you just happen to run into the one man who can make a difference, the man who offered you a job on the way to England and was obviously flirting with you at the same time. Maybe if Marta hadn’t been so blinkered by sadness she would have noticed too many coincidences as well?
When Marta goes on her mission to get the cipher it is obvious that things will not go according to plan – these things never run smoothly. A quick in and out mission for Marta becomes a race against time to save herself and get back to her daughter in England. When Marta meets the impostor and almost gets killed I am reminded of the episode on the bridge in Kommandant’s Girl with Emma and the Kommandant. On this occasion though there is no third party to come to the rescue. When Marta escapes from the train with the bald impostor following hot on her heels I as a reader was hooked on every word and could feel Marta’s fear and anguish. She is only a secretary she says but she is more than that. She survived the Nazi camp and was a member of the resistance. She has killed people in the line of duty. Marta is strong and resourceful, she is used to living a life of fear and looking over her shoulder trusting no one. I think the trouble with Marta is that after being set free from the camp she has changed. For starters she is now a wife and mother, her priorities in life have changed dramatically. She has been living a life of luxury compared to the life she was used to living and I think this may have made her mind set change slightly. If she was still the same Marta we encountered in Kommandant’s Girl and at the start of The Diplomat’s Wife would she have been so willing to marry Simon especially as it was only a short time since the death of Paul? I think that following the death of Paul she decided to settle for comfort and safety and she saw quite wrongly that Simon could offer her those two things. Simon was totally different from Paul. He wasn’t exciting or passionate but he would provide for her and Rachel and he would look after them both no questions asked.

Pam Jenoff the author of The Diplomat’s Wife was clever in throwing the reader right of the scent in this new book. Again at the station before boarding her train there were looking back on it clues that Simon was not to be trusted but Pam didn’t give the reader time to think about that as you turn the page and she throws you a massive curve ball that shocks you to the core. This was one book that was anything but predictable. Escaping from the train fearing that the bald man is yet again going to try and kill her Marta is confronted by a ghost from the past. It was one of those glorious moments in a book when you as a reader wants to cheer and celebrate. The hero saves the day and not just any hero – a dead hero, Paul. Was it too good to be true that Paul was still alive? I myself thought at first that it was a bit unbelievable but as the story continued to unfold Paul’s reappearance was not only plausible but also necessary to the conclusion of the story.
As I said at the start of this essay this book was essentially a love story and for that reason it was I think only fitting that Paul made an almost magical reappearance in Marta’s life. I cannot begin to imagine how Marta must have felt seeing Paul again after all that time. Believing he was dead, grieving him and marrying Simon instead of the man she truly loved. How could you cope with losing the love of your life and then discovering quite by accident that they were actually alive and well? Marta asked Paul why he hadn’t contacted her after the accident. It emerged that he had come to see her and discovered that she was now pregnant and married to someone else. Knowing she was with another man and so soon after his death made him decide to disappear out of her life forever. She had made her feelings clear and so he stood by them. Supposedly Paul had made a new life for himself but this was not really true as he still carried a photo of Marta with him wherever he went for good luck and it was obvious that he was still very much in love with her.

Two things stuck me at this point in the book. Firstly Marta had never really gotten over Paul. She pretended she had but it was a lie. She didn’t love Simon not in the way a married woman should love her husband. He was kind to her and offered her stability and she accepted those qualities over love and passion. Secondly it was only when Paul spoke about the speed in which Marta married Simon after his death that it hit home for me how fast Marta had been persuaded to marry Simon. Of course we learn later in the book that Simon had everything planned out. Marta would need a husband to bring up her child if Paul was out of the picture and Simon would just happen to be on hand to fill that role.

Paul and Marta share a romantic night together in the cellar whilst hiding. Marta says that she doesn’t feel guilty about it as it was impulsive and a one off. It was definitely not planned. She keeps reminding Paul that she is a married woman now; I am not in truth sure who she is really trying to remind when she says that. I thought it was cruel of the author to bring Paul back into the story and allow Marta and Paul to rekindle their feelings for one another when it was obvious that on returning to England Marta would return to her married life with Simon. Even though she loved Paul not Simon I do not believe that she would have left him. I think Paul knew that as well and that must have hurt him deeply. In fact it probably caused him more pain than being away from Marta for all that time when she thought he was dead. To have him alive and still not be able to be with him was probably the worst form of torture ever for Marta.
The scene where Marta and Paul have to escape from the moving truck on the dock and board the boat was almost too terrifying to read. Would they both make it or would their love affair be cut short again? Marta makes a run for the boat on Paul’s orders but he is trapped in the moving truck. Marta is torn between trying to rescue Paul and getting home safe to her daughter. When the commotion breaks out on the dock and she hears the gunshots you can almost feel her heart breaking again. Paul surely can’t be gone again. The boat starts to pull out and Marta is left to ponder what happened on the dock. Paul could quite easily be lying dead on the dock but in true Hollywood style Paul isn’t dead just badly wounded. He races towards the moving boat and manages by some miracle to board the boat. His wounds are quite drastic and there is a chance he wont survive the trip to England. Pam loves playing with the readers emotions continuously giving the readers hope only to dash it again. Paul does survive the journey and is whisked off to a military hospital for treatment. Marta goes to hospital, Simon by her side suddenly the ever-loving husband. Thank goodness Marta doesn’t tell Simon who Paul really is otherwise he would almost certainly be dead.

I liked the fact that when Marta goes to meet Jan who will provide her with the cipher it is assumed that as Jan is a strong person with a lot of power in underground circles Jan will be a man. When Jan is rescued from jail however it emerges that this strong and powerful person is actually a rather ordinary woman, nothing like anyone imagined. Again Pam Jenoff uses a female for a strong character. Jan is known in many circles and is obviously very clever at avoiding detection. No one has met the infamous Jan so it is naturally assumed that those qualities can only belong to a man.

The final scenes at the airport are emotional and full of suspense and tension. Like the scene at the end of Kommandant’s Girl the main protagonist is put into a dangerous situation. The reader is thrown once more into one of those who will live and who will die moments. When Paul arrives to help Marta rescue Rachel you almost raise a celebratory cheer – the hero is here to save the day once more, but then feelings of apprehension arise. Paul has survived death on so many occasions throughout the book will this be the one time that his luck runs out? After a struggle with Simon Paul lies motionless on the ground apparently dead. Simon wants to kill Marta to get her out of the way; she knows too much and has to be silenced. Simon’s accomplice Dava now lies injured on the floor of the plane after a battle with Marta for control of the gun Dava had previously been pointing at her. Marta leaves Paul on the tarmac fleeing for her life with Rachel.

Dava’s shooting of Simon was reminiscent of Marta’s shooting of the Kommandant in Kommandant’s Girl. Although Dava and Marta were clearly on different sides, in the end love saved the day. Simon confessed that he did not love Dava and this was his greatest downfall. Angered by his rejection after all that she had done for him she finally stood up to him and killed him. Dava had loved Simon for years yet he had forced her to abort her baby leaving her unable to have further children. Even after that terrible act she still loved him and wanted to be with him. I think this characterised the old saying love is blind. For me as a reader the funniest part of this scene was the revelation that Paul was alive and that Simon had failed to kill him or realise that the American who had saved Marta whist she was on her mission to recover the cipher was in fact the same person Marta had been in love with when she had first met him on the journey to England.

When Rachel touched Paul’s face and it emerged that he was still alive I cried. Relief from all the tension flooded out. It was a tender moment. Rachel would finally get to know who her real dad was. There would be no more secrets. Paul had almost died so many time in the course of the book it was a delight to find that at the end of the story he was still alive. I never expected that for one second. I was sure Pam Jenoff was going to kill him off before the end but she was kind and allowed him to survive.

In this new story we learn the fate of Jacob, sadly Jacob never recovered from his injuries after the bomb blast and died. We learn that Emma was carrying the Kommandant’s child and that after Jacob’s death Emma married Marek. Emma had ended up in a very similar situation to Marta. The love of her life was gone so she had settled for second best. A man who cared for her and would give her children love and a roof over their heads. At the end of the book however the tables are turned and their lives are very different. Marta is sailing away to America to start a new life with the love of her life whilst Emma’s husband is in prison thanks to Simon and his betrayal. In all probability Marek would be killed for plotting against the communists. It is interesting to see how fate steps in and changes everything. In Kommandant’s Girl Emma is free and it looks like her life is on the up whilst Marta is injured and facing prison maybe even death at the hands of the Nazi’s. In The Diplomat’s Wife Emma is the one whose life is in pieces whilst Marta is happy and very much in love.

I have been trying to decide who I like the best – Emma or Marta. Whose characteristics appealed to me the most out of the two women? I liked Emma in the Kommandant’s Girl because she was brave and resolute in her mission. Yet in The Diplomat’s Wife when we meet Emma it is almost like she is a totally different person. She seems more distant and cold. Maybe it is the war and loss of Jacob that has changed her? I can honestly stay that I did not like the Emma we met in The Diplomat’s Wife. When Marta enters the plane to rescue her daughter and sees a woman I half expected that woman to be Emma. The spark that I had once detected in Emma seemed to have died. Marta was interesting because she was naïve and at times almost fragile yet when push came to shove she was anything but fragile. She could handle herself in most situations and wasn’t afraid to go all out to achieve her goal. She was willing to risk her own life to get the cipher if it meant helping others. At the end of the day Emma and Marta had the same agenda and that was to help others whether that be their country, their people or the resistance it didn’t matter as long as they felt that they were doing something. Neither woman backed away from a fight.

I loved the character of Paul in The Diplomat’s Wife. At first he comes over as the hero who saves the damsel in distress but as the story progresses Marta and Paul become more like equals. I think they give themselves to one another totally. They fit together like two pieces of a puzzle and I believe it is that link that makes them work so well together as a team. I think the intensity of their relationship comes from the fact that they have seen such a lot of bad things and that they are both so strong in mind set. Plus they know their time together is limited so they have to cram as much in as they possibly can in a very short space of time. Paul survives near death experiences throughout this book and I think the thought of losing him again after just rediscovering him makes the bond between them so much stronger. Paul refuses to die, as he wants to be with Marta. He wont let her go from his life for a second time. I can’t imagine loving someone like that, it is a truly remarkable love and I think that it is that love story that keeps the reader hooked throughout the book.

I think that the one common factor that these two books have is love. Both of these books show that even in the darkest of places when the world seems to be a bleak place full of evil and carnage you can always find love. It will always win through even if it only lasts a few days or a whole lifetime. You can find it in the most unusual of places and when you are least expecting it but it is always there just waiting to be found. Emma found love with Jacob and a sort of love with the Kommandant and Marta found the love of her life whilst being liberated from the worst place on earth – a nazi prison camp. Near to death a soldier rescued her and so began a love story that would stand the test of time and whatever the evil in the world could throw at it.