Illusions

'Illusions' follows the fictional Kaufmann family and friends as they struggle to survive the Second World War. Paul Kaufmann wishes only to be a great physician, but he risks losing his family and nationality because of threats at home and abroad. His father, Alexander, is a German patriot and, according to the Nazis, 'Jewish.' He stands to lose his life. Paul's sister, Kirsten, well schooled in the cold-blooded realities of Nazi Germany, who wants to rid the country of its curse,...
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'Illusions' follows the fictional Kaufmann family and friends as they struggle to survive the Second World War. Paul Kaufmann wishes only to be a great physician, but he risks losing his family and nationality because of threats at home and abroad. His father, Alexander, is a German patriot and, according to the Nazis, 'Jewish.' He stands to lose his life. Paul's sister, Kirsten, well schooled in the cold-blooded realities of Nazi Germany, who wants to rid the country of its curse, pursues a romance that threatens to destroy-or save-everything she loves. Erich Krause and Johannes Baum#65533;ller, Paul's closest friends since university days, introduce surprising elements of danger to the family. Their love of homeland and family thrust our protagonists into the midst of some of the war's key events: the Holocaust, the plot to kill Hitler and German-American internment. The Kaufmanns and their friends approach these critical moments with the certainty of experience, but they discover instead only maddening illusions.The supporting cast, other than Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his wife, Lucie; Claus von Stauffenberg and his wife, Nina; Soviet super-sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and a smattering of German officers and high-ranking German civilians are either composites of actual persons or fabricated.