Interview

Sara Young discusses My Enemy's Cradle, her first novel for adults set in a Lebensborn, a Nazi-run maternity home for unwed mothers carrying children deemed to be "racially pure".

Warning: This interview contains potential plot spoilers!

An Interview with Sara Young, author of My Enemy's Cradle

Cyrla lives with her Dutch relatives in Nazi-occupied Holland. She has been successfully hiding the fact that she is half-Jewish—until neighbors threaten to expose her identity. Through an cruel twist of fate, Cyrla enters a Lebensborn as her pregnant cousin, Anneke. Cyrla wants to keep her child, though, so she resolves to leave the maternity home before the baby is born. But an unexpected visit from the German soldier who fathered Anneke's baby complicates her plan to escape. My Enemy's Cradle is a story of love and loss, sacrifice and survival.


How much did you know about the Lebensborn program before you began working on My Enemy's Cradle? What about this relatively unknown episode of history appealed to you as a writer?

I knew nothing about it before I took a walk with a friend, a WWII buff, who mentioned it. Right away I was shocked that something this large, that affected so many people, was largely unknown—that was the first appeal. But soon, as a writer, I began to wonder why no one had set a novel in such a ripe situation: a Lebensborn home was a natural crucible ...