With ‘The Golden Doves,’ bestselling author honors a Holocaust survivor and friend
While promoting her debut novel, Martha Hall Kelly met 93-year-old Auschwitz survivor Irene Zisblatt and promised to keep her story, and the trials of others like her, alive
Bestselling author Martha Hall Kelly was touring for her debut book, “Lilac Girls,” when she complimented the pin worn by the Holocaust survivor who introduced her to the audience. The woman was Irene Zisblatt, and the jewelry featured four tiny Hebrew letters spelling the word “zachor,” an imperative “to remember.”
“She took it off and gave it to me,” Kelly told The Times of Israel in a Zoom interview from her Connecticut home.
When Zisblatt and her daughter returned Kelly to her hotel after the event, the women chatted in the car for hours. Sitting in the dark, Zisblatt recounted how the Nazis deported her at age 13 to Auschwitz. She survived selection only to endure brutal experimentation by physician Josef Mengele, the notorious “Angel of Death.”
“It was a life-changing two hours,” Kelly said. “I’m endlessly fascinated with the stories of that time. Collectively, we are trying to understand how evil that enormous could even exist.”
Much of “Lilac Girls” is about the notorious all-female concentration camp Ravensbrück and the “Rabbits,” a group of women at Ravensbrück used by the Nazis as laboratory animals. But with the zachor pin in mind, Kelly promised herself she would revisit the trials Zisblatt and so many others endured. Seven years and three books later, that day is finally here.
“I always knew I wanted to explore that again,” Kelly said.
In her new 500-page work, “The Golden Doves,” Kelly tells the story of two World War II-era spies who are deported to Ravensbrück. Kelly dedicated the book, released in April by Ballantine Books, to “all the women who survived Ravensbrück” and “those who never came home.”
“With ‘Lilac Girls,’ there was so much that I learned when I was writing it that I couldn’t include in that book,” Kelly said. “There was always more I wanted to go back and include.”
The protagonists endure horrifying events, which they seek to avenge after the war. Their odyssey unfolds into an epic thriller. This new standalone novel explores the lives of new characters — the spies Josie Anderson, an American, and Parisian Arlette LaRue, members of the French resistance whom the Gestapo arrest and imprison at Ravensbrück together with their loved ones. The book sheds light on the atrocities of Ravensbrück and the postwar US recruitment of Nazis.
“I am trying to understand how it all could have happened and honestly make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Kelly said. “I know it’s a cliche but history tends to repeat itself. If we don’t drag out these stories and shine light on them it’s going to keep happening. People want to know. It just takes some digging. And I love to dig.”
Several Nazi figures reappear from “Lilac Girls,” which was a fictional account of the female concentration camp prisoners and their rehabilitation from the Nazis’ torturous experiments. Like “The Golden Doves,” true events inspired “Lilac Girls.” Kelly dove into that story after a visit to the Bellamy-Ferriday estate, a Connecticut landmark that was a childhood home of Caroline Ferriday, an American philanthropist who led efforts to assist the women, many of whom were disfigured.
Kelly fictionalized Ferriday’s philanthropy benefitting the former camp prisoners in what became an instant New York Times bestseller. She went on to write two prequels, “Lost Roses” and “Sunflower Sisters.” Kelly fictionalized Caroline’s mother, Eliza Ferriday, and the Woolsey Sisters — Abby, Jane and Georgeanna — who worked tirelessly on behalf of Union soldiers during the Civil War and pioneered nursing service and education.
All of Kelly’s historical fiction features remarkable heroines. “They are my way of showing we can fight back,” Kelly said. “Good really will overcome evil.”
Kelly’s winning formula reaches a wide readership. Her heavily researched writing with compelling plotlines and empathic characters has garnered sales of more than 2 million copies and translations in 50 countries. A book club kit for her new release is available online.
“I was trained as a journalist and I never got to be a reporter, and in some ways, it’s thrilling to be able to do that research,” Kelly said. “They are novels, but based on real things, and people are very moved by the horror of it.”
In “The Golden Doves,” Josie and Arlette reunite after the war. As they untangle a web of terrible secrets, their quest for justice takes them across Europe and ultimately to French Guiana, as they put themselves in grave danger to protect the ones they love.
“The ‘Golden Doves,’ as teenagers, are spies for the SOE in occupied France. I based it on Virginia Hall, an American spy with a wooden leg featured in the book ‘A Woman of No Importance,’” Kelly said, referring to the Special Operations Executive, a secret British espionage organization established in parts of Nazi-occupied Europe. “Josie and Arlette are underground radio operators. And the Germans had such great technology, they could find a radio operator in seconds in France.”
Josie is a composite figure based on Americans actually imprisoned in Ravensbrück. So is the Nazi doctor the Golden Doves pursue post-war. He is inspired by Mengele, who eluded capture through a network of escapees and sympathizers on the ratline. This post-war escape route of Nazis led from Germany to Rome, and later to the US and South America, in an actual initiative American intelligence deemed “Operation Paperclip.”
Kelly wrote much of the book during COVID-19 lockdown, giving her what she describes as the opportunity to “travel through history from home.” After international flights resumed for tourism, Kelly and her husband flew to Europe and retraced the ratline, spotting the grave of a Nazi sympathizer entombed in a Vatican-adjacent cemetery.
“The Catholic Church and the US government were involved and it blew my mind,” said Kelly. “I am Catholic so I needed to dig into this.”
As for her friend Irene Zisblatt, who is now 93, Zisblatt appears in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning documentary 1998 film, “The Last Days,” which was remastered in 2021.
“We are all trying to figure out how to fight back and deal with the reality of today,” Kelly said. “It is surreal that this is happening again — the rise of national socialism. I always thought that was done, or at least well receding into the rearview mirror. But evidently not. And if we go back and look at how other people fought against the Nazis, it is empowering to remind ourselves that it is possible to fight back.”
Kelly is currently at work on her fifth historical novel, set partially on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, which the US Army, Navy and Air Force used from 1941 through 1945 as training grounds for missions involving landings on beaches, climbing cliffs and bombing practice. Some men never survived training and others never returned from fighting the Axis forces in Europe.
When asked what she hopes readers will take away from her latest project, Kelly said, “I never like to legislate how someone feels. I want them to remember how bad it was for people because otherwise these stories slip into obscurity and then everything they went through was for nothing.”
Perhaps most of all, she wants to honor the significance attached to Zisblatt’s story and her pin.
“I want people to remember and get some strength for today because it’s not getting any easier,” Kelly said.
The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly
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