jerry wible

Franz Clough is a German Transportation officer during WWII. He and his family suffer the firebombing of Hamburg, Germany; but he gallantly rises to meet the overwhelming challenges he faces. He resists the temptation of a seductress and frees a Jewish girl. Two years later, he and his pregnant wife flee Germany aboard a cargo submarine; but his wife dies in childbirth. As unfair punishment for her death, he is forced to become the pimp at a dilapidated brothel. Amongst the numerous notable prostitutes are a clique known as Polacas—young Jewish girls from Poland, forced into the sex trade. Franz sees supervising them as the low point of his life, but his calculation is premature. While fighting inner and outer demons, and from a uranium exchange, he rises to the pinnacle of what is available in town for a German pimp. By his own hand, he then plunges, only to awkwardly burble upward again. In the end, his honor is gone and he has lost everything precious to him; but he finishes to what he considers a draw in life and is sustained by the same girls he once tormented.

This is an intense story, based on the historical record. It is for mature readers who are willing to explore both the euphoria and bitterness of life as it once existed in Argentina, as well as in the protagonist himself.