The Goddess of Freedom

A monstrous tyrant in his pomp….

A desperate suicide bid to kill him….

Set in 1937, four years after the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, The Goddess of Freedom is the remarkable story of Sara Solomon, a Jewish student of architecture living in Frankfurt.

She is a gifted designer, and she should have a bright future ahead of her. The reality is that, as the only Jew on her university course, Sara suffers regular harassment and insults from the other students that sap her spirits. She can see little prospect of employment when she graduates, and when the government announces a ban on Jewish students taking doctoral examinations she sees clearly that there is no longer any place for her in Germany.

The furniture store that the Solomon family owns is being compulsorily purchased under the government’s “Aryanisation” programme, aimed at bringing all Jewish property and businesses into Aryan German ownership. The Nazis’ policy, at this time, is to marginalise the Jews from German society so as to encourage (or force) them to emigrate.

Sara’s family is as keen as any other to leave, but the tide of Jews desperate to emigrate is so great that many foreign governments have placed strict quotas on immigration from Germany. As the Nazis’ anti-Jewish measures become ever-harsher, making life for Germany’s remaining Jews daily more difficult, a huge bottleneck of would-be emigrants is building up,

Convinced that Hitler’s malice towards the Jews knows no bounds, Sara resolves to leave Germany with or without her family. Normal emigration channels seem closed to her, so when she is unexpectedly offered a risky alternative that horrifies her family, she seizes it.

As Sara Solomon’s plans come to a head in Frankfurt, several other people are planning to leave Germany for very different reasons. Malign fate will bring them together to travel to the United States by the Concorde of her day, the Zeppelin airship Hindenburg.

Franz-Josef Müller is a senior official at the Deutsche Bank, Germany’s richest and most powerful. As head of the bank’s Aryanisation department he is responsible for the huge funds garnered from the purchase and re-sale of Jewish property and businesses. But he has a guilty secret that is about to be uncovered, and he and his French wife Louise must leave their luxurious house in Berlin and get out of Germany as quickly as possible.

American film producer Dennis Carter and his assistant, Irene Altmann, are in Potsdam, not far from Berlin. Potsdam is the Hollywood of the German film industry, and Carter is there in pursuit of his most ambitious scheme yet – to bring the German film star Mitzi Schiller to America where Carter hopes she will be the next movie sensation. Mitzi is undoubtedly very beautiful, and she can act, but she is giving Carter and Irene a hard time. With her limited English, her explosive temper and her tendency to hit the bottle she adds up to quite a package.

Then there is Erich Fischer. He leads a secretive life, spending most of his time in a comfortable house at Obersalzberg, Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. Temperamentally he is the very opposite of the Führer, having a voracious sexual appetite that is catered for by a small harem of carefully chosen girls. Physically, though, he is remarkably like Hitler, and that is why he is accorded such special treatment.

Fischer’s presence on board the Hindenburg baffles the other passengers, but they are given no explanation. They are told only that, despite appearances, he is NOT the Führer.
Or is he?

For the answer, and to follow Sara Solomon’s story to its devastating climax, read The Goddess of Freedom.