The World That We Knew

At the heart of a novel about the Holocaust is the story of a golem who comes to life. Ava’s transformation from creature to woman, from monster to human, is magical and improbable. Everything about Ava introduces elements of the supernatural. From her beginnings in the cellar when she’s constructed, things get weird: “It was then the clay figure began to glow” (42).

As a golem, Ava is an expression of an ancient Jewish faith in such creatures to serve the Jewish people in times of trouble and turmoil. In mimicking the role of the Old Testament Creator-God, the rabbi, gifted with the mystical power and the secret incantations to call life from inanimate material, provided Jewish folktales with inspirational stories of great creatures rescuing the Jews during difficult and dark times. Ava is indeed just such a force. She is a massive creature, powerful, fiercely loyal to Lea, and endowed with special abilities that range from seeing the future to communicating with animals and birds. Purely driven by her mission, she understands that when her role as protector is over, when the war is over or her charge is safely out of the Nazis’ reach, she’ll be destroyed.