Engel des Vergessens

by Maja Haderlap

Maja Haderlap gelingt etwas, das man gemeinhin heutzutage für gar nicht mehr möglich hält: Sie erzählt die Geschichte eines Mädchens, einer Familie und zugleich die Geschichte eines Volkes. Erinnert wird eine Kindheit in den Kärntner Bergen. Überaus sinnlich beschwört die Autorin die Gerüche des Sommers herauf, die Kochkünste der Großmutter, die Streitigkeiten der Eltern und die Eigenarten der Nachbarn. Erzählt wird von dem täglichen Versuch eines heranwachsenden Mädchens, ihre Familie und die Menschen in ihrer Umgebung zu verstehen. Zwar ist der Krieg vorbei, aber in den Köpfen der slowenischen Minderheit, zu der die Familie gehört, ist er noch allgegenwärtig. In den Wald zu gehen hieß eben "nicht nur Bäume zu fällen, zu jagen oder Pilze zu sammeln". Es hieß, sich zu verstecken, zu flüchten, sich den Partisanen anzuschließen und Widerstand zu leisten. Wem die Flucht nicht gelang, dem drohten Verhaftung, Tod, Konzentrationslager. Die Erinnerungen daran gehören für die Menschen so selbstverständlich zum Leben wie Gott. Erst nach und nach lernt das Mädchen, die Bruchstücke und Überreste der Vergangenheit in einen Zusammenhang zu bringen und aus der Selbstverständlichkeit zu reißen - und schließlich als (kritische) junge Frau eine Sprache dafür zu finden. Eindringlich, poetisch, mit einer bezaubernden Unmittelbarkeit. Maja Haderlap hat eine gewaltige Geschichte geschrieben ...Die Großmutter wie noch keine, der arme bittere Vater wie noch keiner, die Toten wie noch nie, ein Kind wie noch keines. (Peter Handke)

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, German Literature, War, Novels, Literature, Classics

287 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Austrian author of Carinthian Slovenian descent. In 2011 she won the 25,000 Euro prize prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann prize at the 35th Festival of German Literature in Klagenfurt. Her award-winning poetic text is a three-generations family history, and highlights the resistance of the Carinthian Slovenes against the German Nazi Wehrmacht.

She studied German language and literature at the University of Vienna and has a PhD in Theatre Studies. As a writer, she was co-editor of many years of bi-lingual Carinthian-Slovene literary magazine 'Mladje'.

Reviews

[بثينة العيسى · Rating 4 out of 5]

رواية آسرة.
حتى إذا انتهت الحرب فهي لم تنتهِ فعلًا
وضحايا الحرب، الأحياء والأموات معًا، هم ضحاياها إلى الأبد.

كل لحظة أخرى في حياتك هي محاولة للتخفف منك ومن ذاكرتك، من صرخاتك التي ترددت في أقبية التعذيب.

الرواية مؤثثة بالتفاصيل على نحوٍ بديع، ومكتوبة برقة ورهافة لافتة. رواية تتساءل عن الإنسان وسراديبه المظلمة. سعيه الدائم لإخضاع الآخر وقهره.

أحرّض على قراءتها
وشكرا لدار المنى على ما تقوم به من جهد.

ملاحظة: أتمنى تلافي الأخطاء اللغوية في الطبعات القادمة.

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erschreckend, die Erinnerung an Verschleppung, Lager und Tod, die noch in den nächsten Generationen weiterwirkt, wie ins Erbgut eingeschrieben! Maja Haderlap hat sich an ihre Kindheit und ihr Erwachsenwerden erinnert, an ihre persönliche Geschichte und die ihrer Familie, die untrennbar mit dem Schicksal der slowenischsprachigen Minderheit in Kärtnen verbunden ist.

Bei Gewittern legte Großmutter Weidenstücke in eine Glutpfanne und räucherte das Haus aus, um den Himmel zu besänftigen. Sie konnte Zeichen deuten und ein Gerstenkorn im Auge wegbeten. Sie erzählte ihrer Enkelin oft von der Deportation ins KZ Ravensbrück, von Hunger und Tod, von Verrat, Folter und Zerstörung und vom Großvater, der mit seinen Brüdern im Wald bei den Partisanen untertauchte. Der Vater, als Zwölfjähriger von der Polizei schwer misshandelt, flüchtete ebenfalls zu den Aufständischen. Bis zu seinem Lebensende traumatisiert, betäubt er sein zwischen Aggression und Depression schwankendes Gemüt mit Arbeit und Alkohol.

Feinfühlig und sehr poetisch schreibt Maja Haderlap aus der Sicht des kleinen Mädchens, dann der Heranwachsenden und der jungen Frau und legt behutsam die Bruchstücke ihrer Erinnerung frei. Sie erschreibt sich ihre Identität und Heimat aus Bildern vom bäuerlichen Leben, aus Gerüchen, Geräuschen, Geschmäckern, aus Gehörtem und Erlebtem, aus ihren Träumen, und später auch aus ihrem erwachten politischen Verständnis. Ein berührendes und wichtiges Buch!

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relatively alinear, absolutely eastern European, associative, autobiographical (or at least very true-seeming) novel mostly about the narrator's coming of age and awareness after WWII. Her father was a partisan who resisted the Nazis, a drinker, a smoker, scarred for life by a few years on the run. The usual WWII atrocity exhibition, agrarian peasant life shattered by modernity and war, a consciousness coming into its own very much affected by the reverberations of conflict around her, expressing itself ultimately in poetry/art. Very straightforward language at first when the narrator is young becomes progressively lyrical, unpredictable, sometimes a little flighty in an non-annoying way as she matures, interspersed with exposition almost like a hastily written history book. A pleasant read if you like the occasional paragraphless list of brutalities and suicides. Gave me a nightmare in which I escaped into the woods to hide from occupying forces. Look for it from Archipelago later this summer.

[Afaf Ammar · Rating 4 out of 5]

"بإشارة من يدها تدعوني جدتي لأن أمشي في إثرها. حسبُها أن تشرع في التحرك حتى أتعقب خطاها. أتنفس بملء أنفي عطر ملابسها، ورائحة الحليب والدخان، ورائحة الأعشاب المُرة التي يحتفظ بها نسيج مئزرها. أنظم خطواتي الصغيرة على وتيرة خطواتها الزاحفة، وأُدندن بلحن حُلو أسئلة يُردّدها خفيض ُ صوتها..."
رواية مكتوبة بشاعرية مميزة تأسر القلب، مغمورة بتفاصيل بدأت غاية في الدفء ثم تدرجت نزولًا مع الأحداث متعمقة في برودة الألم.
طفلة صغيرة تروي من ذاكرتها قصص جدتها عن بعض الفصول من حياتها، وذكرياتها المؤلمة من معسكر اعتقال رافنسبروك. في دفتر أحمر مزركش دونت جدتها ذكرياتها في معسكر الاعتقال، بلغة جازمة، وبصعوبة تتجلى في الأخطاء الإملائية، فهي تكاد لا تعرف الكتابة، ولكنها كانت تملك من القناعة ما يجعلها تصر على الاحتفاظ بقصتها. أن تكتب شهادتها على ما حدث في المعسكر... عن المعاناة، والقسوة، والألم، والقهر، وتمكنها من النجاة رغم كل شيء. تحتفظ جدتها بالدفتر في غرفة نومها المغمورة بالذكريات، وبالضوء الحليبي الذي كان يحولها إلى مشاهد مرئية ويبث فيها الحياة من جديد.
وسنوات طويلة تمر، والطفلة تكبر، وتكتشف أنها للأبد ستظل مغروسة في طفولتها مثل وتد، مغمورة تمامًا بالماضي كأنه كالفخ الذي انغلق عليها وأبقاها طفلة مازالت تنظم خطواتها الصغيرة على وتيرة خطوات جدتها. تزور المعسكر وترى ظلال تاريخ ترن فيه أصداء قصص جدتها تحلق فوقه... تركض لتهرب من الزمن، فيحاصرها كنهر جليدي، ينساب فوق كل ما حدث. فهي لن تنسى قصص جدتها عن المعسكر، ستظل مغروسة في طفولتها... في غرفة نوم جدتها وهي تمشط شعرها، بينما تغمرهم ذكريات الدفتر الأحمر، والضوء الحليبي.
"لعل ملاك النسيان فاته أن يمحو من ذاكرتي آثار الماضي. لقد عبر بي بحرًا عليه بقايا وشظايا عائمة. جعل جُملي تتصادم مع أنقاض وحُطام حملتها المياة كي تصاب بالجروح، ولكي تُشحذ وتُسنّ."

19.11.2019

[jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is presented as a novel, but it's hard, in reading it, not to think of it as a memoir. I have given some thought to what makes a novel read as a memoir and I can't quite pinpoint it -- but maybe we expect a novel to have a certain dymanic form, and to be shaped by certain dramatic occurrences and by a certain progressive development. This book is driven by the urgency of telling a story that hasn't been told, that of the Slovenian minority in Austria during WWII. This, too, felt memoiristic rather than novelistic to me, in this particular book, though of course this needn't be the case for every book driven by a historical urgency.

In any case, I was captured by the writing for most of the book -- the protagonist's childhood, the increasingly haunting memories that fell her family and many of her fellow villagers, and that eventually fill up her mind. Her collapse under the cumulative weight of all this silenced, unprocessed past. The unrecognition of Austro-Slovenian partisans both by the Austrian and the (then) Yugoslavian governments, the former because the partisans are perceived as affiliated a bit too much with communism, the latter because they are not communist enough. There are some incredibly moving passages in which the narrator explains (see?) how the partisans simply did what needed to be done for their and their community's survival -- how it wasn't even a choice really. They were Slavs, therefore prime targets in Hitler's path of racial "purification." And many of them, the majority of those who didn’t join the partisans in the mountains, ended up, in fact, in concentration camps, and only a few returned, and those who returned were never the same.

The child and then young woman who narrates the story conveys powerfully, first the mystery in which her family and the entire village is steeped; then her own sense of responsibility for the survival of her family, in which trauma is ravaging minds and physical health; then her need to leave but also, at a distance, to understand, because if she understands the terrible trauma and the terrible belittlement and disgracing that followed maybe, just maybe, things will get better, for someone, maybe.

As a document of a poorly-known corner of WWII this is terrific. As a document of what makes some people last and some people fold, this is terrific too, But at the end, 1/5 to the end, I felt that the "novel" had told me whatever story it had to tell and there was no need to continue.

I wish a careful editor had gotten in here and cut the bits that needed to be cut and blended a bit more rationally the bits that needed to be connected. There is too much repetition. There is, also, some clumsy meshing of styles. Still, if you are interested in the particular story this book tells, then you should read it. And if you are a WWII buff, then you should read it. And if you feel compelled to remember the people who died for justice and freedom but history forgot, then you should read it too.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly not my kind of thing, but extremely artful and interesting in its own way. The early chapters are bucolic, which is nice for about twenty pages, but perhaps ran on for too long; by far the more interesting sections of the book are towards the end, when Haderlap starts playing with history, dreams, and ideas, rather than reporting the details of Grandmother's herb-drying technique. But that's more or less unavoidable: this is a linear bildungsroman, and Haderlap is an intelligent enough author that she doesn't want to start out all sophisticated, when the focal character is a child. Later in the novel, Haderlap confesses that it is hard for her to write in the first person, which explains much of the novel: like Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, this is a book about a person who barely even exists in the book; she (or he, in Powell) acting more as a camera than as a consciousness for most of the time. Here's what Grandmother did, what Father said, what Mother felt--very little, though, about what grand-daughter/daughter felt, said, or did, until she's suddenly an acclaimed poet.

No doubt plenty of readers will have my experience upside-down, very much appreciating the rich details of the first half, and feeling alienated by the cold events of the second half. As a reading experience, this will doubtless frustrate almost everyone; as a work of art, it is exceptional in being able to combine herb-drying techniques (along with other details that rapidly passed out of my memory) with reflections on language and identity, history, and psychology. At different moments it reminded me of, inter alia, Josef Winkler's catalogues of brutality, Ferrante's best moments (i.e., when she's dealing with the fall-out from the fascist years and the years of lead), and Chirbes' 'On the Edge,' which also dealt with the fall-out of fascism.

There's also a problem of context. I just read a review (okay: I read a headline) about a book translated from Korean--North Korean. The review (okay, headline) was something like "books translated from particularly under-represented languages quickly look more like anthropology than art." That's a real problem here. I knew nothing about Slovenian resistance to Nazism, nor about the Slovenian minority in Austria. I learned about that from this book; I would have enjoyed the book as book much more had that not been the case. Sad. I guess I'll have to re-read it.

[David Ramirer · Rating 5 out of 5]

ein sehr schönes buch über das bäuerliche leben und die tiefe der traumata, die ein krieg in der bevölkerung mit sich bringt. haderlap webt eine schöne decke aus gerüchen, farben und anderen sinnlichen eindrücken in deren zentrum die erinnerung an ihre großmutter steckt, aber auch die veränderung der landschaft am ende des vergangenen 20. jahrhunderts wird plastisch begreifbar gemacht - bei aller politischen richtung, die das buch hat, bleibt es ein offenes feld für den leser, der sich selbst ein bild daraus destillieren kann.
ich las dieses buch während einer schweren gesundheitlichen krise und war dankbar für die tiefgehenden schilderungen - das buch hat mich in den zwei schwersten wochen meiner krankheit sehr eng begleitet, daher wird es in meinem weiteren leben immer einen besonderen platz haben.

---

zweitlesung im november 2024, diesmal laut vorgelesen:
mir war beim ersten lesen vor 12 jahren der hohe anteil an lyrisch-poetischen passagen nicht so sehr aufgefallen wie diesesmal. die sprache kippt immer wieder unversehens in poetisch-lyrisches, dann geht sie wieder zurück zu stofflicher prosa. die unbekümmertheit mit der dies geschieht hat etwas sehr sympatisches.
was überdies auffallend ist, ist die zwar nahegehende und eindringliche, dabei aber niemals übertriebende beschreibung der geschehnisse in den KZs und im 2. weltkrieg, die die großmutter und der vater erleben musste. bisweilen hat das erzählen eine fast tabellarische form, die in ihrer form auch an das endlose leid gemahnt, das in dieser zeit über das land kam.

als einzigen kritikpunkt kann ich nur anführen, dass an manchen stellen manches eher nur für die autorin und nicht für den/die leser/in festgehalten scheint, was dem text bisweilen eine zu große hermetisch-persönliche note gibt; aber das ist kritik auf hohem niveau: es ist ein großartiges buch.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my full review on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/sbSLsdwwipo

It was easy to love this imperfect novel (translated from the German by Tess Lewis) and overlook its flaws because of all that worked: a powerful tale about a young Slovenian–Austrian girl growing up in the 1960s with parents and an unforgettable, indomitable grandmother doing their best to come to terms with the trauma of having lived through the Nazi occupation.

[SilviaG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha resultado una historia muy interesante, y que me ha dado a conocer la realidad, para mi desconocida, de la comunidad eslovena en Austria. No era consciente de su existencia, ni tampoco de como sufrió con la anexión de Austria por parte de la Alemania nazi.
La autora, Maja Haderlap, forma parte de la misma, y en este libro nos cuenta la historia de su familia.
Sus abuelos vivían en un valle montañoso en la zona fronteriza con la antigua Yugoslavia o la actual Eslovenia. A raiz de la annexión y de la política llevada a cabo por los alemanes, muchos hombres del pueblo decidieron unirse a los partisanos que luchaban contra el régimen. Cómo castigo, los nazis apresaron a sus mujeres y niños, los torturaron y los llevaron a los campos de concentración.
La historia se centra, por un lado, en la abuela de Maja, sobreviviente del campo de Ravensbrück. Una mujer fuerte, amante de su tierra y sus gentes, apreciada por todos y un pilar en la vida de la escritora.
Y también en su padre, un hombre torturado y traumatizado por su pasado cómo partisano (se unió al movimiento siendo un niño). Un hombre con problemas para crear lazos emocionales, cuya inseguridad y miedos le hacen depender del alcohol y maltratar a su familia. Un hombre sencillo, que ve cómo sus sueños y sus esfuerzos se ven frustrados por su incapacidad para sobreponerse a los recuerdos y a su pasado.
La autora nos cuenta la historia desde el presente, remontándose a su niñez y adolescencia. Ella la describe desde la visión de una mujer que ha conseguido estudiar y conocer la cultura de sus antepasados, unir testimonios de diferentes familias y contextualizarlas dentro de la historia de su país.
No es un libro fácil de leer, hay que dedicarle su tiempo. Pero me ha resultado muy enriquecedor.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars. Angel of Oblivion seems to be two books in one: a coming of age story narrated by an unnamed child growing up in Slovenia/Austria some time after WWII, and the more memoir-like story of the politicization of a woman poet who lives sometimes in Vienna, and sometimes in the same setting that she does in the first part of the book. The publisher indicates that the novel is based on the life of the author.

As a very small child, the narrator is more attached to her grandmother than to either of her parents. Her father was with the partisans during the war. Tortured by the Nazis when only ten, he has become a sullen, angry man who is not much of a father or husband. His father died in a concentration camp, and his mother survived Ravensbrook by hiding within the camp until the end of the war. Only his mother seems to have any real effect on his behavior. The girl is sent to the taverns to get him to come home, which he does only when she tells him Grandma sent her. Both father and grandmother seem to despise the girl’s mother, for a reason that is not clear to the little girl.

Grandma and Father talk in great detail about the horrors of the war, both for partisans who lived and died in the wilderness, and for those who survived the camps. My understanding at the beginning of the book was that the mother somehow disgraced the family. As the girl grows older, she listens to these stories, which form a kind of memory for her. She is also witness to similar stories told by neighbors and relatives. She tries to love her father, feeling empathy for what he has had to endure, but his drunken suicidal rages separate him from every family member.

What was new to me was learning that Slovenia was annexed by one nation after another. Sometimes a part of Austria, where schoolchildren were forced to speak German, then part of Yugoslavia under the Soviets, Slovenia finally became an independent nation after the fall of the Berlin wall. The Slovenians were persecuted by the Nazis and the Austrian Nazi sympathizers, tortured, beaten and sent to camps when their family members were thought to be allied with the partisans. They were primarily Catholic, and their religion permeated their daily lives. Many did not survive the camps, and those who did were scarred physically and emotionally.

Against her father’s wishes, the girl is sent to a secondary school far from home, where she is a resident student throughout the school week, returning home only for weekends. It is here that she first begins to understand that the German speakers disdain the Slovenian children. She attends classes late in the afternoon because the Slovenians share the school buildings with the German-speaking children. Because of language differences, she is ghettoized within the school.

A good student and a strong-willed child, she succeeds academically, and is able to go to Vienna for university. There she becomes a poet who is fluent in both languages, but writes poems only in Slovenian. When she returns home on vacations, she finds she doesn’t fit in any more. But she is aware of the history of her people and highly critical of the way they have been treated.

For the first 2/3 of the book, I was captivated by this plucky child and her brave, outspoken Grandma. I found their characters easy to identify with. And the feelings of a small girl who witnesses her father’s drunken deterioration was spot on. The last third of the novel, however, became overtly didactic. The narrator, now a grown woman, speaks poetically at times, but for the most part tells without showing. I felt it suffered from the lack of that small child’s perspective. I found myself underlining large portions of this part of the book, however, for the insight it shows for oppressed minorities can be easily applied to the events of today. Over all, the story of the little girl and her family is very good. The portion of the book narrated by the woman she becomes felt more like an essay than a novel. I would recommend it, however, for those who, like me, were unaware of the suffering of the Slovenians in WWII. It puts another face to the very grim period we know today as the Holocaust.

Thanks to NetGalley and Archipelago Books for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

El ángel del olvido es una novela extraordinaria que nos sumerge en un mundo rural con un gran sentido de la comunidad en el que el dolor y la muerte están muy presentes. Allí, en Austria, casi en la frontera con Yugoslavia se concentran campesinos, partisanos, delatores… héroes anónimos que conocemos gracias a la voz de una niña. Una niña que hereda el dolor de su abuela, superviviente del campo de concentración de Ravensbrück; su padre, partisano que junto a su padre luchó contra los nacis; y su madre, que ajena a esa realidad sobrevive en la misma. Y que con ese dolor, página a página crece hasta convertirse en una mujer.

La novela te atrapa desde las primeras páginas gracias al respeto y la prosa con la que se nos hace partícipes de esta familia, de esta comunidad. Las tareas cotidianas se describen con minuciosidad, convirtiéndose en algo poético. También los valles, ríos y montañas que los rodean. Así tras varias páginas uno cree poder oír la respiración de los bosques y los trinos de las primeras aves de la mañana, oler el café de cebada y sentir la angostura de los prados.

Y en esa atmósfera que a muchos nos parece idílica, la joven protagonista nos permite ser testigos de testimonios de la época que nos hablan de la vida y la muerte. Testimonios de una minoría, que, como todas las minorías, nunca tendrán un foco para contar los horrores de una guerra y las cicatrices que, inconsciente o conscientemente, trasladarán a la siguiente generación.

Tengo que admitir que empecé enterneciéndome la relación sincera entre abuela y nieta para terminar rendida ante la relación de esa nieta, siendo ya una mujer, con su padre. Un padre que no siempre es el mejor padre, un padre con cicatrices tan profundas que cuando no trabaja se rinde ante la vida.

Para disfrutar a sorbos.

[ChrissyBby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not to get into too much detail on the contents of this book, but simply the way the traditions of the Slovenian minority in south-eastern Austria are described and depicted here is enough to make this one of my favourite books. My family, though not part of this minority, hail from the same region so I recognised many of the depicted elements. The book itself is very well written, although it can occasionally become quite disturbing and difficult to read, which is of course also due to the topics touched upon, namely the author's family's suffering under the Nazi regime, PTSD, generational trauma, family feuds and the author growing up in all this turmoil.

[Hani Al-Kharaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

رواية "محليةٌ" جداً، لا يبدو أن كاتبتها تجهد لجعلها مفهومة للقارئ العالمي الذي لا يمتلك أفكاراً عامة حول سلوفينيا والخلفية التاريخية لصراعاتها مع محيطها الألماني-النمساوي-اليوغوسلافي. أسلوب السرد كان رتيباً جداً وخالياً من أي نوع من الإبداع كما كان العمق الدرامي تافهاً وخالياً من الأحداث والإثارة. أما الترجمة فهي في منتهى السوء عدا الأخطاء المطبعية واللغوية

[Omar Kassem · Rating 3 out of 5]

" لعل ملاك النسيان فاته ان يمحو من ذاكرتي آثار الماضي، لقد عبر بي بحرًا فيه بقايا و شظايا عائمة..جعل جملي تَتصادم مع انقاض و حطام حملتها المياه كي تصاب بالجروح، ولكي تُشحذ و تُسنّ"

رواية جميلة..جاءت لتؤكد بأن مرحلة مابعد الحرب على الانسان اصعب من الحرب ذاتها.
الترجمة جيدة..ولكن يوجد اخطاء لغوية عديدة !

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soft, poetic treatment of the searing effects of World War II trauma on Slovenians, but all the more effective for being understated. A young girl gradually learns fragments of memories from her grandmother and father. Beautifully written with sensitivity but never maudlin.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelf for a few months. When I started to read it I recognized some of the location names because I had just been putting together the itinerary for a trip my husband and I will be taking in August that starts in Slovenia. We will be spending a week on a bicycle tour that meanders back and forth across the borders of Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. The Austrian State of Carinthia lies along the borders of Italy and Slovenia. In connection with this book, this description of the language spoken in the area from Wikipedia resonated: "The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Bavarian group. Carinthian Slovene dialects, which predominated in the southern part of the region up to the first half of the 20th century, are now spoken by a small minority." After reading the GR blurb on the author, my feeling that this was an autobiographical novel was reinforced. It says about this book: "Her award-winning poetic text is a three-generations family history, and highlights the resistance of the Carinthian Slovenes against the German Nazi Wehrmacht."

The narrator of the book (whom I think of as the author) proceeds to remember her life in a mostly chronological manner from when she was a child. Her grandmother is predominant in her early memories. Her grandmother sometimes told her stories about the Ravensbruck concentration camp and her journey back to Carinthian. Her grandfather and her father and his brother were partisans. Her father's story comes in bits and pieces but never very coherently. It is obvious from early on that her father has PTSD. After his mother, the narrator's grandmother, is arrested, her father had been brutally tortured by the Nazis before running to the partisans after his mother was arrested.

The narrator has siblings, but they are rarely mentioned. This story is the narrator's recollections of her childhood and then her own struggle with her family's history as partisans and then living on the Austrian side of the Austrian/Slovenian border but speaking Slovenian. The actions of the Nazis were horrific as they tortured and killed anyone they thought might be a partisan or associated with the partisans. Whole families were wiped out. Then after the war, the former partisans recognized their differences. While many partisans were communists who wanted a socialist country, others were deserters from the German army who were fighting to free their country from fascism but not inclined to want it to become communist. And, of course, many of the Austrian leaders post WWII had been Fascists or Nazis. And then Yugoslavia broke up; in 1991, Slovenian declared itself an independent country but did not find itself caught up in the Balkan Wars. But this is not made a big deal in the book. Instead, the narrator in the book tries to understand all the rarely discussed events of WWII and its aftermath so as to make some sense of her family and herself. The last 60 pages of the book dealt with this and I found myself inserting many pieces of napkin at places that I wanted to revisit. At this point in the book, the language becomes poetic, even as it describes the brutality visited on the region. A few examples:

The war seems to have retreated into the forests of our valleys. It has made the fields and meadows, the slopes and hills, the mountainsides and streambeds into its battleground. It has ripped the houses, stables, kitchens, and cellars from their purpose and turned them into bastions. It has taken the landscape into its clutches, sunk its teeth into the earth, it has read the geographical map as a map of war.
. . . .
The enemy fights with bread and water, with clothing and meat, with work and silence. The Gestapo put on the disguise of partisans, the Slovenian language is its cover. The front passes through the most vulnerable point. Fighters are dragged from the forest by the hair on the heads of their wives, their children, and their parents. They are fought against through their families standing in the fields and not in the trenches. They are punished threefold for their resistance and are left to ask themselves, until the ends of their lives, if the fight against the Nazis was worth the cost of engaging in this conflict and delivering up their family members to the Nazis' collective punishment. It is on the farms that the most superb battles are fought and the most summary trials executed. Minor stories to which no one can bear witness, human lives, quickly seized, soon discarded. No one saw, no one wanted to believe. Things seen could rob you of sleep and speech, but the Gestapo wants people to speak: all bandits seen and recognized must be reported in the right language. The partisans, on the other hand, demand silence, no one must know they had come, and no sooner come, they are gone.
. . . .
What remains are the children who must listen as the police harass and beat their mothers, screams in their ears, leaflets in their mild canisters, secret messages in their braids, letters in snowballs, lice in their hair. What remains are the footsteps in the snow that the children wipe away, the stink in the school where they are beaten because they can't speak German. Carinthians speak German!, and they all shit their pants when German is beaten into their fingers and heads with slaps and caning. They still greet each other the same way today, hey, shitter, smelly-assed crybaby, you still scared? (pages 238-40)

And then with respect to what it was like post-WWII:
Is the plunder divided up in peacetime? In peacetime must one be afraid of losing one's reason, of turning away a friend and embracing an enemy?

The hesitant, the cautious, the wounded, the horrified, the silent, the distraught will all be at a disadvantage. The politics that brought about the war will deny them compassion. Those wounded on many levels will trail behind. So as not to provoke the majority of its citizens, the Nazi sympathizers and the German-nationals, the new Austrian state will distrust those who fought against National Socialism. Because, it is argued, what is dubious about their resistance is not that it was directed against the Nazis, what is objectionable about it is that it allowed them to form their own opinions about the Slovenian community's role in Carinthia's future, opinions that then had to be respected during the negotiations for the Austrian state treaty, that' all we need, a law giving generous protection to a minority as a countermove to Yugoslavian territorial claims, according to the wishes of the occupying powers! And all the while, Austria had nothing to do with the Nazis, Austria itself was a victim, didn't understand what was happening, didn't join in, it wasn't even a country in that difficult time. No one in this country so gifted in dissimulation ever welcomed the Nazis, no one longed for the Greater German Reich, no one made themselves guilty, no one assisted the Final Solution, they just took part a little bit in the shooting, the assassinations, the gassing, but that doesn't count, nothing counts.

Politics believes the language of war: The politically engaged Slovenians will look at the non-political without comprehension, because they were the ones, after all, who fought for their rights, because they themselves took on the task of being identifiable, of being vulnerable to attack, of being a buffer. They sought refuge in action while those who were beaten down remain silent and refuse to understand why their fight for survival should become a pretext for the victory of an ideology. The revolution: an empty promise. (pages 247-8)

This is just a small sample. If you have heard why there was little action taken by the allies in connection with the Austrian Nazis in the aftermath of WWII, this, and much of what follows, will make more sense. I thought this was a great book for anyone who is interested in WWII and its aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe. Don't expect facts. This is about people.

[Truusje Truffel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het landschap van mijn kinderjaren

Maja Haderlap (1961) beschrijft in het ego-document De engel van het vergeten de dieptrieste en ontzagwekkend ervaringen uit haar jeugd. Een jeugd die overspoeld is door de erfenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de voor velen onbekende geschiedenis van de Oostenrijkse Slovenen.

Karinthië is een deelstaat van Oostenrijk en grenst onder andere aan Slovenië. Toen in 1920 Oostenrijk, na het verlies van de Eerste Wereldoorlog uiteenviel werd dit een zogenaamd kroonland waar een minderheid aan Slovenen woonde. Zo ook de familie van Haderlap. De missie van Hitler was dat hij wilde forceren deze Slovenen Duitsers te laten worden. De Slovenen weigerden dit met als gevolg dat vele jonge mannen zich aansloten bij de partizanen. Degenen die in handen van de Duitsers vielen werden gedeporteerd naar werkkampen. Ute Weinmann heeft hierover in haar verduidelijkende nawoord ruim aandacht aan besteed.

Vanuit het gezichtspunt van de nog heel jonge Mic laat de auteur het verhaal van haar jeugd in de jaren '70 van de twintigste eeuw ontrollen, als boerendochter in een gezin waar ook haar grootmoeder deel van uitmaakt. Met haar vader heeft Mic een goede band. Hij is de schijnbaar vrolijke bijenkoning van zijn bijenvolk, dat hij met hart en ziel verzorgt en waar hij Mic de fijne kneepjes van wil leren. Haar moeder is wat onvoorspelbaar en wisselt van vrolijk en liefhebbend naar depressief en afwijzend. Grootmoeder bekommert zich om haar kleindochter, is de koningin in de keuken en Mic is het grootste deel van de dag te vinden in haar kielzog.

'Als ze aan het koken is, dicht grootmoeder het eten eigenschappen toe. Haar gerechten hebben geheime krachten, ze kunnen het hier en nu met het hiernamaals verbinden, zichtbare en onzichtbare wonden helen, ze kunnen iemand ziek maken.'

Het klinkt allemaal redelijk vredig. Een schilderij met een boerentafereel, in een wonderschone en serene omgeving. Maar dan valt de naam van het vrouwenkamp Ravensbrück meerdere malen in de verhalen die Mic van haar grootmoeder te horen krijgt. De kindergedachten en de observaties van Mic zijn naïef en volgzaam. Vanuit een belevende ik-verteller doet ze het verhaal van haar vroege jeugd, maar de impact ervan is op haar vooralsnog niet groot.

'Op een avond hangt moeder twee ingelijste engelenprentjes boven mijn bed in de kamer die ik met grootmoeder deel. Sinds ik een broertje heb slaap ik niet meer in de slaapkamer van mijn ouders in het renteniershuisje maar bij grootmoeder, wat ik heel fijn vind, want grootmoeder behoort tot de inventaris van mijn kinderjaren, waaraan ik me vastklamp.'

Mic groeit op en de verhalen van grootmoeder lijken indringender te worden. De betekenis ervan kruipt Mic steeds meer onder de huid en langzamerhand gaat ze meer en meer begrijpen van de dingen die haar ter ore komen en om zich heen ziet gebeuren.
Ook haar vader heeft als partizaan in de bossen geleefd en gruwelijke dingen meegemaakt. Als tienjarige jongen is hij aan zijn benen opgehangen en gemarteld om informatie uit hem los te krijgen. De psychische gevolgen van de getraumatiseerde man worden voor zijn dochter steeds duidelijker, begrijpelijker, zichtbaarder. Hij drinkt overmatig en is (zelf-)destructief.

Wanneer Mic als jonge vrouw het ouderlijk huis verlaat om aan de Universiteit van Wenen theaterwetenschappen te gaan studeren, kan ze zich voor een deel emotioneel van haar familie distantiëren door een beschermende muur op te trekken tussen hen en haar. Toch kan ze voor zichzelf haar etnische afkomst niet verloochenen en komt tot de ontdekking dat ze zich meer verbonden voelt met haar Sloveense wortels, dan ze zich voor mogelijk had gehouden.

Haderlap heeft een heldere schrijfstijl met bondige zinsopbouw die echter niets afdoet aan het geheel. Heel mooi is het proza. Beeldend en gruwelijk. Hartbrekend en prachtig. Hoe paradoxaal dit ook moge klinken.
Opvallend is het ontbreken van hoofdstukken en, op punten en komma's na, van interpuncties, ook in de spaarzame dialogen die zich allemaal in haar gedachten vormen. Het verhaal is chronologisch, maar geen aaneensluitend geheel. De alinea's zijn opzichzelfstaande stukjes van het grotere geheel en, naarmate de tijd vordert, verandert ook de stijl. Haderlap lijkt meer afstand te scheppen en overziet alles vanuit vogelperspectief. Een kakofonie van verontwaardigde gedachten over de gevolgen van dit vergeten en voor velen onbekende stuk geschiedenis van een bevolkingsgroep die smacht naar erkenning. Pas een jaar voor zijn dood krijgt haar vader, vanuit het Oostenrijkse fonds voor slachtoffers van het nationaalsocialisme, een symbolische schadeloosstelling, die voor hem eindelijk de lang ontbeerde erkenning is.

'De engel van het vergeten zou wel eens vergeten kunnen zijn de sporen van het verleden uit mijn geheugen te wissen. Hij heeft me door een zee gevoerd waarin overblijfselen en brokstukken dreven. Hij heeft de zinnen in mijn hoofd tegen ronddrijvende wrakstukken en scherven aan laten botsen om ze te verwonden, om ze scherper te maken. Hij heeft de engelenplaatjes boven mijn kinderbed voorgoed verwijderd.'

Titel: De engel van het vergeten
Auteur: Maja Haderlap
Vertaling: Marianne van Reenen
Pagina's: 256
ISBN: 9789059368576
Uitgeverij Cossee
Verschenen: juni 2019

[Jan (Kuestenkopf) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5

[malena · Rating 5 out of 5]

die sprache mit der das erzählte vermittelt wird, ist einschneidend und genau deshalb ist sie so essenziell für den inhalt. nicht nur kunstvoll, sondern ganz tiefgründig wird hier ein generations übergreifendes trauma aufgearbeitet. ein wirklich relevantes werk, das auf jeder leseliste stehen sollte.

[Matevž]

Tu gre za iskreno pričanje o slovenski državljanski vojni, o vojni med partizani in domobranci. Pomembna tema, ki še vedno ni dosegla sprave in jo po vsej verjetnosti tudi nikoli ne bo. Kako torej pisati o tem? Kako ostati povsem iskren, povsem nepristranski, hkrati pa ne zanikati, da gre za kar koli drugega, kot subjektivno pripoved?

To je možno doseči le skozi subjekt oz. skozi število oseb, ki so vsak zase subjekt - ki so izkusili in bili del te vojne, ki so ji ušli, v resnici pa ji ne bodo nikoli zares ušli. Obremenjeni so z vojno. Vsaka generacija je bolj oddaljena, manj sprašuje. Vendar pa je iskreno in resnično pričanje, kot je roman Maje Haderlap možno le, ko govorimo o človeku in človeškem duhu, ne o dogodkih, ne o zgodovinskih faktih ali letnicah ali študijah takih ali onih. Ljudje v Angelu pozabe so hkrati obsojeni na neprekinljivo vez z grozotami vojne v katero so bili vpleteni, hkrati pa so ravno v tem romanesknem soočanju subjekta s svetom ločeni od te iste vojne, kot jo razlaga zgodovina, kjer sicer beseda vedno gre le za skupino, za kolektiv - partizani proti domobrancem in nacistom in fašistom. V vsem tem je vsak vpleten kot subjekt, kot človek, posameznik. To omogoča hkrati povezanost kot tudi ločenost od kolektiva, imenovane skupine - to pa je tisto, kar se zdi ključnega pomena za razumevanje romanov, ki govorijo o velikih zgodovinskih dogodkih, ki jih sicer ni skoval en sam človek, ampak več njih.

[Tanja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein wundervolles und zugleich schreckliches Dokument europäischer Geschichte, das uns erinnern soll an das Unheil des Krieges, Familientragödien und das Dilemma der Sprachlosigkeit.

[Urh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Četudi je knjiga pristna, iskrena, točna in izredno povedna, mi ni všeč. Ne gre toliko zato, da bi bile lahko stvari povedane drugače ali bolje, ampak gre preprosto zato, da v resnici so stvari za pisateljico bolje prečiščene in prebavljene kot recimo zame. Po tej knjigi ne samo, da težko sebe umestim v "MI", težko umestim celo vse ostalo dogajanje v to koroško zgodbo. Pisateljica sama to večkrat pove, sploh boleče je ko to zdaj razlaga avstrijska poslanka slovenskega rodu, ampak je nedvomno resnica, da je neke vrste narodna zgodovinskost prez izziv tega romana kot, vsaj zame, izziv mene bralca kako to zgodbo sprejmem kot "MI". Celo čefurji raus so bližji, saj so bolj humani in bolj humanistični, tako po jeziku, geografiji, kot po navadah opisanih v knjigi. Vem, da to pomeni niz slabega o meni, ampak sem neumen in se učim o svetu v katerem prebivam. Knjiga me je tako odbijala, da bi ji dal tudi eno zvezdico, ampak drobci v tej knjigi so tudi vredni svojega zlata, četudi nenaklonjenega ali celo ustrahovanega bralca.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angel of Oblivion is a dead-on, sensitive portrait of trauma over time, in all its wordless gnarling. Surviving as failure to thrive, as resignation to forgetting-remembering, to coexisting with the dead and with a past that crowds out whatever else is in the room. Any room, anytime.

This is a portrait of manifold in-betweens. Life and death, the Slovenian and German languages, war and 'peacetime.'

I was riveted by the relationship between narrator and grandmother. I have tremendous respect for the translator — this work in English is a literary achievement.

This is one of my all-time-favorite books.

[Salma Mohaimeed · Rating 3 out of 5]

ذكريات الحرب أشدُ وطئا من الحرب ذاتها ليس على من شهد الحرب وحسب بل أنها تُورث!

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comments ton follow

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maja Haderlap beschreibt in diesem Buch ihre Kindheit und das Aufwachsen als Kärntner Slowenin im vom Krieg geprägten Unterkärnten. Ihre Großmutter war im KZ, und ihrer Familie und Bekannten widerfuhr im Krieg Unvorstellbares. Sie erzählt von der Tragik und vom Unglück der Kärntner Slowenen während der Nazi-Zeit und wie die Erfahrungen nicht nur die direkt Betroffenen prägten, sondern auch das Leben der Kinder und Enkel wesentlich beieinflussten.

Hin und her gerissen zwischen die eigene "Sprache und Kultur vergessen und im Deutschen aufgehen, oder sich wehren und die verheerenden Folgen ertragen", ist die junge Frau von politischen Widersprächen verunsichert und auf der Suche nach Identität und Sicherheit in ihrem Leben, sucht einen Weg, mit allem fertig zu werden.

Alles in allem schafft es Haderlap meiner Meinung nach, ihre Geschichte so zu erzählen, dass man sich danach denkt: Diese Geschichte musste dringend festgehalten werden und ist ein Manifest gegen Faschismus und für ein Miteinander trozu grundverschiedener Kulturen. Sehr lesenswert.

[Eline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super mooie zinnen en metaforen. Wel heel fragmentarisch geschreven, soms zelfs onsamenhangend naar mijn smaak, vooral halverwege het boek. Daardoor heb ik het even weggelegd. De mooiste passages waren die waarin Mic vertelt over hoe ze opgroeit op een boerderij met haar ouders en oma - allen getraumatiseerd door WOII. Je ziet de landschappen voor je, zou er graag eens naartoe gaan. Voor mij een compleet onbekend gebied (Karinthië).
Achteraf had ik eerst de toelichting aan het einde van het boek moeten lezen, over de geschiedenis van de Oostenrijkse Slovenen in Karinthië. In het boek worden daar veel verwijzingen naar gemaakt en dat is een heel complexe geschiedenis. Indrukwekkend dat er in die grote oorlog zo veel kleine ingrijpende verhalen te vertellen zijn. Gelukkig blijven ze op deze manier verteld worden.

[Yaaresse]

DNF @ 18%.

While I was interested in learning something about the little-known resistance movement of this Slovenian minority, I just couldn't get into the book. The problem with reading a book translated into English is that you never really know how much the translation differs from the original or how much the translation affects one's response to the book. I have a feeling -- for no real reason I can pinpoint -- that this book reads better in the original German than it does in English.

[emmsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wenn man müde ist, sind ihre Sätze manchmal schwer aufzunehmen, weil sie so viel mehr beinhalten als das geschriebene Wort. Die Geschichte, alles passiert und so erzählt, als wäre ich es selbst. Ich habe mich davor noch nicht mit den Partisanen auseinandergesetzt und das buch ist eine grosse empfehlung wert.

[Lahierbaroja · Rating 1 out of 5]

No es para mí. Pero más allá de eso: me ha provocado un bloqueo lector de tres pares de narices.

No he conseguido conectar con la historia, el exceso de lirismo se hace pesado y exagerado, apenas se consigue avanzar.

https://lahierbaroja.com/2020/09/14/e...