As someone who married into a heavily-conservative Jewish family (I'm reform/nonobservant myself), I appreciated the accuracy of the Jews of the time. As someone who's read other golem stories (see list below), I liked the take on them, especially the way the father explained how he (for lack of a better term) turned the SS man into a golem.
Not knowing much about Niels Bohr other than a general grok of his scientific discoveries, I had no problem with him being in the story, though like some others I also was a little worried that Niels Bohr actually was in the story. And speaking to the people who weren't thrilled with Holger Danske waking up at the end and going River Tam on the SS... well... that was the big payoff, I think. The whole story built up to the father using his power over golems to save everyone. I agree that the story would've been as good if the father had directly Obi-Wan'd the SS, but it wouldn't have been as exciting or dynamic or vivid as the golem laying the smackdown.
I mean, come on, if you were a submissions editor and you first read this and, in your mind's eye, saw an eight-foot-tall Danish warrior statue cleaving SS officers in twain, you'd probably have stamped a big smiley-face on this one too.
If there was a problem I personally had with the story, it was with the coda at the end. I would've been happy with the story had it ended with David, Niels, and Margarethe (sp?) on the boat, heading to Sweden. I think it was evident that, with Niels as his mentor, David would end up being successful in his field. We didn't need to hear he was still kicking around, 60 years later, about to win a Nobel Prize (?).
The reading was up to its usual strong Eley standards. I'm glad that I didn't have to pronounce those names. If anything, "Holger Danske" often sounded like "olgerdansk" or "holgerdansk" and I wasn't sure how it would be spelled. Little details like that sometimes grab my brain and take me out of the story. But then, had I been reading this instead of listening to it, that wouldn't have been an issue, so I'm not really unhappy or anything.
Overall, a good story. I liked it a lot. I find that, though I used to strongly resist Holocaust-centered fiction in my younger days, taken in small doses like this and like "Brothers", I'm okay with it. Perhaps because, unlike what was forced on me in Hebrew school in the early 90s, this story wasn't at all heavy-handed. It wasn't a cautionary tale like so much of that genre seems to be (IMO). It was a story that happened to take place during the Holocaust, happened to involve Jewish refugees, and happened to also be nominally in the SF/F/H genre. The incidental-ness of it made it work for me; it was about the characters, not about the events.
Other good golem stories (novels):
Terry Pratchett: "Going Postal", "Feet of Clay"
Marge Piercy: "He, She, and It"
China Mieville: "Iron Council"
