Overview:
Local author Jennifer Coburn’s new book “The Girls of the Glimmer Factory” comes out in January. Local residents can attend a pre-release event in Coronado on Jan. 22.
Jennifer Coburn remembers the paintings and art she viewed while staying at a hotel in a Czech town, which was formerly the location of prisoner barracks.
She can tell you how she learned how to split mica, an electrical insulator that prisoners were forced to work on while in the concentration camp.
She recalls slipping through the slit of a chain link fence, following local students into the tunnels and encountering the prisoners’ camp entry numbers, names and art etched into the walls.
And her constant companion in her discoveries of the town was music. That was an intentional decision.
She wanted to feel what it was like to be in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, which was a “model ghetto” used for propaganda films and Red Cross inspections. By 1940, Nazi Germany had assigned the Gestapo to turn the Czech town called Terezín into a Jewish ghetto and concentration camp.
Unlike other camps, on certain filming or inspection days, the atmosphere would be filled with Czech classical music and jazz of the era, along with the soundtracks of the many musicals and operas. Many prisoners at Theresienstadt were world-renowned artists, musicians and intellectuals. The children’s opera “Brundibár” performed 55 times at Theresienstadt.
“There’s a lot that I need[ed] to just come there and find out for myself,” Coburn explained.
She spent five days in Terezín to tell the historical nonfiction story, “The Girls of the Glimmer Factory,” inspired by the true story of Theresienstadt.
Coburn would not say that World War II historical fiction was what she had in mind when she first started writing.
In fact, she had an affinity and talent for romantic comedy, memoir and novels centering on women’s voices.
And yet, certain stories kept calling her, and her community spurred her on.
“I know a lot of historical fiction authors, and they kept saying to me, ‘Why don’t you write this book?’ And I thought, ‘Why do they keep saying that? As if it’s something that I could do?’” Coburn said.
It was a television show that actually piqued her interest in this period of history, so she started researching what’s known as the Lebensborn program, a secret breeding program that operated from 1935 to 1945.
Their aim was to repopulate Germany with a homogenous community. They tried to accomplish that plan through the systematic kidnapping of thousands of “biologically valuable” foreign children to be raised in German homes.
“I just thought, I cannot wait to read the novel about this,” Coburn explained. “I like learning about history through historical novels. I don’t want to just read a history book with dates and fall asleep.”
So, she looked up the topic.
“I found about 20-25 nonfiction books,” Coburn said. “Not a single novel. I decided I would write the book that I wanted to read with a book club, because it seemed really ripe for book club discussions and storytelling.”
The result was her 2022 historical fiction novel, “Cradle of the Reich.” During that research period, she realized there was so much history to tap into.
“What really interests me with World War II is you see the worst and the best of humanity,” Coburn said. “You see people who are just ordinary, or who thought they were just ordinary folks, and given the right circumstances they become heroes and risk their lives to save people that they don’t even know. I just find that so inspiring. And then, I’m also intrigued by how someone can be seduced by hate.”
While she was researching “Cradle of the Reich,” she stumbled across Theresienstadt.
“The more I learned about this camp, the more I said, ‘This is not a story element. This camp Terezín star needs its own novel,’” Coburn said. “So that’s how I decided to write about this one.”
Coburn combined her affinity for strong women characters and this significant, but terrifying, part of the propaganda history.
The story tells the narrative of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, in particular, the factory that many of the imprisoned women worked in. In “the Glimmer Factory,” women were tasked with splitting mica, an electrical insulator to be put in Nazis planes. Coburn learned this was how the women came up with the nickname for the factory.
“This tedious job for the women was sitting there all day and slicing the mica,” Coburn said. “They maintained their sense of humor, called this place the Glimmer Factory, because mica is very glimmering.”
The story centers on two main characters, Hilde and Hannah. Hilde is a true believer in the Nazi cause, working in the Reich Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda. Hannah is a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt. The characters were old childhood friends.
“I wanted to really dive in and see, ‘How does a person, how does an entire culture go from a civilized society and a pretty decent person…How do you descend into a cult of hatred? How does that happen?” Coburn said.
She wanted to explore how two people with shared history would eventually become such different adults but also come back together.
“It’s a story about how women’s friendship can help see us through even the most harrowing of times,” Coburn said. “For me, as a writer, that was more interesting to see what happened to Hilda to make her this way. I wanted to also have someone who was in the camp so that I could really take you behind the gates and show you this is the reality, and this is what was shown to the world.”
“The Girls of the Glimmer Factory” comes out Jan. 28, 2025. But, Coburn will be hosting a pre-release event at the Coronado Public Library on Jan. 22, 2025.
She hopes people will learn not only about history through this book, but also think about it in relation to the present and future.
“There’s so much we can learn about human nature, about how people react in their own communities and towards other communities once the world around them is changing,” Coburn said. “I think it’s fascinating. I think it’s also a real warning to what can happen if we are left unchecked.”
The library, in partnership with Adventures by the Book, will be hosting the event at 6:30 p.m. in the Winn Room. Visit the library’s website for more information.
