The muses are elusive; You can spend days looking for them without success and that, suddenly, they touch you with the finger at the most unexpected moment. The journalist tells Viruca Yebra that she was run over when she was sent to Marbella in 1983 to cover the ‘social life’ section. «I used to go out to the seafront. There I noticed many older ladies. They were elegant, beautiful, distinguished … I longed to know their stories, “he explains to this newspaper. At the stroke of a tape recorder, time and the desire to investigate, he revealed his experiences. And what he found was a real surprise: “Some were girls during the war, others came from families who had come to Spain fleeing Nazism.”
protagonist of his new work: ‘
The Last Nazi Countess‘(Espasa, 2021). “I like to call them my Clotildes because, with the testimonies of all of them, I have shaped the plot and their personality,” he reveals. The resulting cocktail has notes of history, love Y overcoming. Although its main asset is that it flees from the Manichaeisms seen a thousand times in books that border the WWII. «It is novel because I am not talking regarding the conflict as such, regarding evil Nazis or hierarchs with crimes of blood. I dive into the grayer characters. Those who starred in the other story, “he says.
Flight from saxony
Yebra puts us in the shoes of a lady of noble birth who, despite hating Nazism, is forced to flee from her manor house in Saxony before the Soviet advance. “We meet her in the early winter of 1945, following learning that her husband, Max, who was fighting in the German army, has been shot,” she reveals. The picture of the first chapters is chilling, as Clotilde must abandon most of her possessions and travel south to request the help of her husband’s older brother. “The roads are destroyed, there are no roads … She becomes a refugee who, in addition, has to take care of some people in the service under her charge,” she says.
One of the benefits of ‘The Last Nazi Countess’ is precisely its ability to narrate the day following the war. «I seek to convey the despair of those days. Nobody talks regarding what happened to the hundreds of thousands of Germans who were forced into exile from that moment, “he says.
The most dramatic thing is that, as the journalist explains, most of them they were branded Nazis for the rest of their lives although they had not collaborated with him Third Reich. This sad truth is represented in a phrase that Clotilde’s aunt tells her throughout the play: «You’ll always be a nazi countess».
However, the author also transmits to us the lives of many other men, women and children who have tiptoed through the pages of history. All of them, through the eyes of the good and unfortunate countess. «I am also talking regarding the Jews who wanted to find the remains of their murdered families. We always explain the bloodiest, which is what sells the most. So I prefer to focus on forgotten characters, “he adds. The key, in his words, is that history is not made up of only «aberrant facts“, But also by other” parallel moments that often help to clarify things. ”
Road to El Dorado
The third leg of this novel is that it shows the change that the members of the German aristocracy of the time had to face. Men and women accustomed to a life of nobility who, overnight, lost their privileges. Until then, a person of the status of Clotilde had not been able to have relations with just anyone. That vanished with the flight. Although it suits her well in the novel. The trip and her affable character make her show solidarity with the people around her, talk to everyone and take advantage of what surrounds her, ”he explains.
Throughout the play, the journalist also conveys to us the suffering of thousands of Germans who, during their departure from Germany, were forced to leave their children with almost unknown relatives or friends. She is one of these people. Fate has been ten years without seeing their little ones. When she recovers them, she understands that everything has changed and that they have gotten used to living without her. That’s a drama», It affects. And that, as she struggles to prove that she was not a recalcitrant Nazi and tries to unravel the mystery surrounding Max’s death.
Although the book does not focus only on the 1940s. Rather, it covers three decades of history and a dozen enclaves through the eyes of Clotilde. And, how might it be otherwise, among the most striking is the Marbella that dazzled Yebra. That region that, no matter how much they have repeated to us until exhaustion, was not a hive of exiled officials from the Third Reich. “It is true that it housed some, but it was not a refuge for Nazis,” he says. According to the journalist, for most it would have been impossible to have a good way of life in the area. “The war destroyed the economy of many,” he completes.
However, he does not deny that Marbella welcomed many Germans who fled the war and the occasional official loyal to Hitler. «I came across the families of some during my investigations. Most wanted to go unnoticed, to be camouflaged. The funny thing is that, on a personal level, with his neighbors, many did not hide that they were Nazis“, Explain. Why has this idea that the region was a haven for hundreds of Third Reich military personnel spread? Among other things, because of the legend of Otto Skorzeny. “He lived all his life in Madrid doing business, he came as a guest, but he had no home here,” he completes.
Three questions to Viruca Yebra
What regarding reality and what regarding fiction in the novel?
It is a mixture of both, but there is more to reality. The only thing that is fiction is it, but it is the compendium of an infinity of stories that I have managed to collect. There are many women who have lived their experiences. Other characters participate by representing anecdotes that were real. That’s the juiciest thing: everything I tell has been true and someone has lived it.
What years did you live in Marbella?
In the most striking: the one from the sixties and seventies. But it also goes through the Côte d’Azur or London. The key is that you always have the past of Nazism in your backpack.
What are you looking for with this novel?
I don’t want to do the usual, I want to see the gray side of life. That, and tell the stories of my Clotildes. The book is their story and theirs, because I have also interviewed men. Children of the war who were twenty years old then and today are close to eighty. Very few of those remain, and they are living history.
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