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The novel February Shadows (also known as Februar Schatten) was written by author and historian Elisabeth Reichart in 1984 as a response to her discovery of the tragedy of Mühlviertler Hasenjagd (The Rabbit Hunt of the Mill District). On February 2, 1945 almost 500 prisoners escaped from special barracks number 20 of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Upper Austria only to be hunted and killed by the inhabitants of the nearby village of Mühlviertler. All the villagers were instructed under Nazi command to find every escaped prisoner and either bring them to authorities or murder them immediately. The result was a bloody massacre involving previously "unpolitical" civilian men, women, and children. Most of the prisoners were Soviet Officers; there were only seventeen known survivors.

February Shadows is an historically accurate fictional novel that explicitly depicts the event of Mühlviertler Hasenjagd through the eyes of a young girl named Hilde. The story is told in hindsight as Hilde is reaching back through repressed memories at the prompting of her adult daughter Erika who wishes to write about her mother's experiences. The book is essentially Hilde's silent inner monolgue as she struggles with her traumatic past and scarred present.

The story is not written in a traditionally chronological manner, nor does it conform to the rules of traditional grammer or sentence structure. The use of fragmented sentences and stream of consciousness allow the reader to better understand the psyche and experiences of the protagonist while reading the plot.

Plot

The story begins with Hilde awaking in the middle of the night to the sound of her telephone ringing. Upon answering she discovers that her husband, Anton, who was staying at a nursing facility for a severe illness has passed away. His death triggers feelings of loneliness and abandonment along with painful memories of the death of her older brother Hannes. Her daughter Erika, who is also present when Hilde receives the phone call, begins to cry for her father. Hilde becomes impatient with Erika; hinting at the continual and thematic strain of their relationship. The absence of Anton sends Hilde into a state of panic and despair.

Each day Hilde visits Anton's grave mentally talking to him as if he is still alive. One evening as she is returning home she discovers that a black cat seems to be following her. The cat causes her to remember two distinct experiences from her past. The first is a memory from when she was a small child and had attempted to hide a stray cat in her bedroom. Her family was very poor and could not afford a pet, but she saved her table scraps for it anyway. One day as she was coming home her father met her drunk in the doorway. He informed her that he had snapped the neck of the cat and then beat her harshly with a fly swatter. This first memory seeped into the second. She then remembered her daughter, Erika, begging to keep a stray cat she had found. Anton had granted her wish, but the cat ruined the neighbors' gardens and Hilde was forced to drown it in the river.

The following day Mr. Funk, a friend of her husband's, appears at her door and pressures her into joining the Retiree's Union. She joins because Anton had been a member of the Austrian Socialist Party and he would have approved of her socializing with other members. She assured Mr. Funk that she would attend the next evening social. Mr. Funk's visit forces another memory to resurface. She remembers her daughter asking what party Anton had belonged to during the period of National Socialism; Hilde recalled him being part of the Hitler Youth. The reader also discovers that Hilde's brother, Hannes, was killed by the Nazi Party. Erika's insolence upsets Hilde greatly.

Soon after, Erika calls stating that she will be coming to visit. Hilde wants to be with her daughter, yet she feels as if her daughter is a total stranger. Erika acts boldly and actively pursues her career as a writer. Hilde believes the only reason Erika wishes to come home is to get information for her book. Hilde hates relaying her past experiences to her daughter; her childhood was full of poverty, loneliness, and shame. Anton had been her way out of the past, and she only wanted to move forward; she was angry at her daughter for forcing her to relive it.

Hilde attends the Retiree's Union social only to find herself pretending to be happy. She watches the dancers on the dance floor and mourns the absence of her husband. The dancers trigger another memory from her childhood. She sees her father kicking her mother on the dance floor; she runs out to help. Soon both she and her mother are being beaten on the ground. Her father will not even let them comfort eachother. The only person she has to turn to is her brother Hannes. He comforts her. The memory is too painful for her and she leaves the social immediately.

Erika arrives the next day and announces that they will take a trip to the "village" so she can obtain more information for her book. (The reader must assume that the village is Mühlviertler.) Hilde does not wish to go, yet does not want to be excluded. As Erika and Hilde enter the village Hilde recalls working hard in the fields to harvest the crop the farmers left behind in order to have enough food for their large family. She remembers the hunger pains and how her father could not find work. She remembers Fritzi, a member of her apartment-style household, bringing eggs and bacon on sundays from the farmers and how she had felt proud carrying the basket into the kitchen. She had wanted her mother to be more proud of her than she was of her older and prettier sister Monika.

Hilde sees the lifeless and leafless pear tree in the village. She refers to it as the "February Tree." The tree that Hannes had been killed on. She remembers a Nazi in a black uniform telling her at school that her brother was dead. She remembers running through the snow and losing one wooden shoe in an attempt to save him. She remembers discovering he truly was dead and laying in the snow hoping for death. She and Erika visit her old house and she recalls beatings; they then visit the pond where she is reminded of the many loads of laundry she was forced to do alone with her mother. She begrudged her brothers who were not forced to do work, her oldest sister, Renate, who lived with their grandparents, and her delicate sister Monika who was never asked to manage hard labor. They walk down the lane to the old school lined with apple trees; she recalls the rough feeling of cobblestones on her sore feet and the bitter taste of the small apples. She also evades a certain barn on the lane, and avoids looking out into the distance towards the area which once held the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.

Upon returning to their hotel room Hilde reflects on her daughter. Her inner thoughts display envy toward Erika's privilege to be educated and to choose her career. Hilde reveals that she had always wanted to be a nurse; however her dreams of a nursing career were shattered the day her village was bombed during air raids; she watched her brother Stephen die as she was swallowed by mounds of earth. The raid had made her weak and incapable of dealing with trauma later in her life.

Eventually during their stay in Mühlviertler Erika is able to extract information about the fateful day in February that Hilde had been pushing from her memory for many years. Hilde relays that in the middle of the night she and her siblings were awoken by the sound of sirens. Her parents and the other tenants of her home were forced to hold a roll call in which Pesendorfer, the nazi authority in their house, told the tenents that many Russian convicts had escaped from the nearby concentration camp. He explained that it was their duty to Germany to find and kill each of these convicts. Hilde, being a young girl, is told to stay at the house; however she is worried about protecting her brother Hannes (who, like her other brothers is forced to search for prisoners) and sneaks away to find him.

In her search she comes across the barn near her school house. She enters it only to find that Pesendorfer, her neighbor Mrs. Emmerich, and her brother Walter all violently killing prisoners. She runs home and finds Hannes who informs her that he has hidden a prisoner in his wardrobe and that she must remain silent about it.

The next morning the villagers attend church to commemorate Candlemas. The hunters seek purification and are urged by their pastor to side with Germany and continue the search for the prisoners. At this insistence Hilde finds herself telling Hannes' secret to her mother. The story is vague about how this information is relayed to Pesendorfer, however he finds the prisoner, kills him, then takes Hannes away to beat him for his misconduct. Hilde recalls cleaning the blood from her brother's face after the beating. The following day she finds that Hannes has been hanged for his actions. Her guilt in the causation of two deaths is evident through her narration.

Back in the present day Erika is stunned by the horrific story and deeply regrets forcing her mother to relive the event. The novel closes with the image of the mother and daughter driving away from Mühlviertler with Hilde at the wheel and her foot on the gas pedal.

Characters

Hilde: the protagonist of the novel. She is an old woman who witnessed Mühlviertler Hasenjagd as a young girl and attempts to evade all memories of the traumatic event.

Anton: husband to Hilde. He is the stable force in Hilde's life.

Erika: daughter to Hilde and Anton. She is a writer who wishes to create a novel about her mother's life experiences during World War II.

Mr. Funk: friend to Hilde and Anton. He is in charge of the Retiree's Union in their housing complex.

Hannes: brother to Hilde who is executed by Nazi soldiers for his attempt to save the life of an escaped prisoner during Mühlviertler Hasenjagd.

Father: father to Hilde. He is a poor, drunk authoritarian who abuses Hilde throughout her childhood.

Mother: mother to Hilde. She is a weak figure who turns a blind eye to the abuse inflicted on Hilde by Father.

Fritzi: neighbor to Hilde. She is a friend who is sent to labor for another farmer in order to obtain food for the poverty stricken household.

Max: brother to Hilde. He is married to Fritzi.

Stephen: brother to Hilde. He is killed during the bombing of the village during the war.

Walter: brother to Hilde. He murders an escaped convict during Mühlviertler Hasenjagd.

Monika: sister to Hilde. She is a delicate girl who is unable to handle the stress of the war and perishes in her sleep.

Renate: sister to Hilde. Hilde speaks little about her except to mention that she lived with their grandparents.

Mrs. Roth: neighbor to Hilde when she is an adult. She comforts Hilde shortly after the death of Anton.

Anna: friend to Hilde. She meets Hilde as a child, but they discover eachother later as adults.

Mrs. Emmerich: neighbor to Hilde. She murders an escaped convict during Mühlviertler Hasenjagd.

Pesendorfer: neighbor to Hilde. He is the nazi authority in her childhood home.

Mrs. Pesendorfer: wife of Pesendorfer.

Mrs. Wagner: neighbor to Hilde.

Mrs. Kal: neighbor to Hilde.

Sources

Bibligraphy

• DeMeritt, Linda. “The Art of Confronting Taboos.” Department of Modern and Classical Languages of Allegheny College. 2000. <http://webpub.allegheny.edu/employee/l/ldemerit/reichtrans.html>
• “Elisabeth Reichart- February Shadows.” Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought. Ariadne Press. 2004.
• Hoffmeister, Donna L. “Commentary.” February Shadows. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1989.
• Killough, Mary Klein. “Freud’s Vienna, Then and Now: The Problem of Austrian Identity.” Blue Ridge Torch Club. 2006. <http://www.patrickkillough.com/international-un/vienna.html>
• Michaels, Jennifer E. “Breaking the Silence: Elisabeth Reichart's Protest against the Denial of the Nazi past in Austria.” German Studies Review. Vol. 19, No. 1 (1996): pp. 9-27. JSTOR. German Studies Association. March 31 2010.
• Reichart, Elisabeth. February Shadows. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1989.
• Thornton, Dan Franklin. “Dualities: Myth and the unreconciled past in Austrian and Dutch literature of the 1980s.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States -- North Carolina. Proquest. Publication No. AAT 9968684. March 31 2010.
• Wolf, Christa. “Afterword.” February Shadows. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1989.