SS Jew

Think. You are alone—like the other 300 prisoners at your NAZI work camp. All you’ve known for three years is death, starvation and torture. The opportunity to escape requires you to kill a guard. If so, then what would you do? Where would you go? Where to hide? How would you survive in a nation of people who’d be happy to turn you over to the cruelties of the Gestapo? These are some of the choices faced by Gunter Meier, prisoner 57976. What would you do? Caught up in a world of violence and death, Meier experiences an Odyssey across NAZI Germany toward, what he hopes will be, haven. There is no turning back, or turning away, from the situations that force Meier to address the insanity of a world turned upside down by the forces of nationalism, pride, and a desire for blood vengeance. There is ever the question—how do you struggle against the forces of evil without yourself becoming evil? This is a study of an individual caught in the age-old tension between existential realities and deep moral imperatives. Faced with the need for resolution, the reader is left to decide.

The long-awaited fourth novel, SS Jew, has finally made it to print. The reason for the delay is straight-forward and prosaic: The Preface. How do you write a Preface for a novel that deals so intimately with the Holocaust without having been there? Never does the phrase "Words Fail" leap into a greater reality than when studying the Holocaust. That said, the author apologizes for his hubris in presuming that he can somehow characterize the events of that terrible time-without have been there. Perhaps the reader can find his or her own truths in what is written here. Bart's first novel, Satan's Bargain, was published in 2007. His second, Girl: A Novel, in 2010, and his third, Wadmalaw, A Ghost Story in 2011 were published by Canterbury House Publishing. Bart taught psychology at Caldwell Community College for 27 years, retiring in 1997. He received his A.A. from St. Petersburg Jr. College in St. Petersburg, Florida, his B.A. from the University of South Florida, and his M.A. in psychology from Appalachian State University in 1974. He completed an EdS in Adult Education in the mid-1980s. Underpinning his writing is a set of diverse experience. He was a Sergeant in the paratroopers at Fort Bragg and Germany. He was a community organizer in the mountains of North Carolina during President Johnson's War on Poverty. As a youth he worked in construction, retail sales, bulldozers, and landscaping. He also raced stock and sport cars, and operated shrimp boats. He is past-president of High Country Writers of Watauga County, NC. In March 2012, Bart purchased an eighty-year-old business, Grandfather Country Store, located on an Eastern slope of Grandfather Mountain just outside of Blowing Rock, NC. He and his store manager, Sharon Blair Tolbert, have struggled through the terrible economy of 2012 & 2013 to re-vitalize what was once a community center. As such they need you to buy this book to help keep the business from going under.