The Pendulum

This gripping memoir traces Brazilian-born American Julie Lindahls journey to uncover her grandparents roles in the Third Reich as she is driven to understand how and why they became members of Hitlers elite, the SS. Out of the unbearable heart of the storythe unclaimed guilt that devours a family through the generationsemerges an unflinching will to learn the truth. In a remarkable six-year journey through Germany, Poland, Paraguay, and Brazil, Julie uncovers, among many other discoveries, that her grandfather had been a fanatic member of the SS since 1934. During World War II, he was responsible for enslavement and torture and was complicit in the murder of the local population on the large estates he oversaw in occupied Poland. He eventually fled to South America to evade a new wave of war-crimes trials. The pendulum used by Julies grandmother to divine good from bad and true from false becomes a symbol for the elusiveness of truth and morality, but also for the false securities we cling to when we become unmoored. As Julie delves deeper into the abyss of her familys secret, discovering history anew, one precarious step at a time, the compassion of strangers is a growing force that transforms her world and the way that she sees her familyand herself.