The Right Side of Wrong: Renegades Against the Reich is a compelling family history that draws on letters, official documents, and firsthand testimony to chronicle one family’s struggle to survive two world wars while refusing to surrender their humanity. Author Dr. Ruth Hillelson talks to Book Glow about the book.

The journey that became The Right Side of Wrong began with an unexpected conversation at a medical conference in Strasbourg. At what point did you realize you were no longer simply gathering family information, but uncovering a story that needed to be shared with others?

I realized my story needed to be shared after I received the two small suitcases which had belonged to my grandfather through both world wars. My amazement and my love for my mother motivated me. The personalities of my grandparents and my aunt and two uncles helped guide my research.

Before that chance encounter in Strasbourg, how much did you know about your mother’s family history, and what questions or mysteries had remained unanswered throughout your childhood?

My mother had died in 2008 following a long battle with multiple myeloma. I missed her terribly and looked everywhere for traces of her and her upbringing. I knew she had been born in Poland. I thought the remainder of her European life had been spent in Stuttgart. I knew my uncle Joachim had been killed during the war. But I wanted to know how and when and where. From all stories, he had been a magnificent and selfless sibling, even as a child. I wanted to know more about him. I knew my grandmother was Russian. All my mother could or would tell me was that she was from Belarus. Details of the concentration camp imprisonment and the death march were unknown. I knew my aunt Erika was a spy. I was told this when I was eight years old. No details were forthcoming. When I met her as a young teenager, she showed me the drill marks in her skull. No one in my German family would give me details.

What was it like to be reunited with long-lost relatives and handed two weathered suitcases filled with letters, photographs, and family secrets?

It was breathtaking and gut wrenching at the same time. Opening the suitcases and running my hands over the documents felt like I had gone through the looking glass. It was surreal. My cousin Helga is an amazing and insightful person. Seeing her again was like regaining my own roots.

This family’s story spans shifting borders, identities, and survival strategies under extreme political pressure. What did your research reveal about how ordinary people adapted emotionally to living inside systems they could not control?

My research revealed the power of love and hope and purpose. The family unit and their moral compass and their ability to ask questions is what held them together. The communications with visits and letters and pictures were ways for them to stay together. The German psyche was being eroded before and after the war. The family had purpose. The children had music, chemistry, figure skating, and later medical studies. My grandfather was the stabilizing force.

Your grandparents’ love story begins with an unlikely meeting and a romance that unfolds against the backdrop of war, political upheaval, and displacement. What did you discover about their relationship that surprised or moved you most?

I was surprised by their passion and  steadfastness. Those were dangerous times. My grandfather as head of the Kaisergarde for Kaiser Wilhelm was going back and forth to Russia while the countries were at war. They both were incredibly brave. It is daunting to see one’s grandparents as two young people in love. But they were.

Your grandmother Tatjana’s need to conceal her Jewish identity through forged documents speaks to survival through disappearance. What did you come to understand about the emotional cost of becoming someone else in order to remain alive?

My grandmother was a force of nature. Keeping her heritage a secret was a necessity for survival. She would focus on raising the children and keeping them safe. She was brilliant. She made sure they spoke fluent German and Russian and Polish. Through these things and through communications with her sisters, she kept her inner being alive.

Your mother Christa was a talented figure skater. What did skating represent in her life, and why was it important to you that readers understand this part of her story?

My mother Christa was on the National Figure Skating team. She was a perfectionist, an athlete, and a gifted pianist. The world was her stage. Figure skating represents the ability to pursue dreams in a world where bombs are falling. It was only with the newfound documents that I was able to see the knee injury while skating that resulted in my mother’s trip to Hohenlychen. It was because of her national ranking that she became a patient of Dr. Karl Gephardt. Letters from other patients indicated many of the soldiers’ deaths from sepsis while under his care. Dr. Gephardt was brought to justice at the Nuremberg Doctors Trials where he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was hanged for this. This story needed to be told.

Throughout the book, members of the Dindinger family are confronted with impossible choices—whether to protect themselves or protect others, remain silent or risk everything. As you researched their lives, what did their experiences teach you about maintaining one’s humanity when morality itself is being distorted by those in power?

The Dindingers were a family of principles who opposed totalitarian government. The Fragebogen show that the family was under Gestapo watch from 1933, probably because of Adi’s connection with the Kaiser. Living in Poland and watching their friends disappear, they knew how to stay alert but help others in need. That was a family pillar. Erika took this to the level of a spy. Tatjana was helping her sisters stay alive, even at risk to herself. Joachim grew to hate Hitler but remained loyal to his country and to his comrades. Because he was in reconnaissance, he did not personally witness most of the atrocities. But he had heard enough to make him risk his life sending vital information back to Erika. All of these different paths taken by the family have shown me that there are always ways to do the right thing. Love, loyalty, and faith maintain our humanity.

Tatjana’s arrest and deportation to Bergen-Belsen is one of the most devastating turns in the family record. How did you approach writing about this moment while remaining faithful to both historical documentation and personal inheritance?

I had known that the possibility existed that Tatjana had been in a concentration camp. The documents indicated she had been taken to Bergen-Belsen because of her association with Israelites, a derogatory word for Jews by the Germans. She was facilitating the escape of her sister to Palestine. This was heartbreaking for me, but it seemed this part of her story flowed so easily. She had been released by the Allies, who were the Brits. She had been in captivity for months and was very sick when found. Tatjana was an educated woman. She was so excited when I went to medical school. Only upon finding these suitcases and researching Bergen-Belsen did I understand her relationship with the medical students in the camp. My timeline indicated that Erika remained missing when Tatjana finally returned home. So I remained true to both history and personal memory and archives as I was writing this chapter.

After assembling a history that spans survival, complicity, and resistance within one family, what do you hope readers carry with them about the weight of silence—and the responsibility of remembering?

The lessons and memories from this time cannot be forgotten. To remain silent is to enable the past to repeat. We all can be caught in a war we don’t choose. And as wars rage around the globe, we must remember not to condemn all countrymen on the basis of politics.

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