Heart Flesh Degeneration

by Ludwig Laher

In 1940 the Nazi Storm Troopers set up a Work Education Camp in St. Pantaleon near Salzburg and then, after its overhasty closure in 1941, a Gypsy Detention Center. Hundreds of arbitrarily incarcerated prisoners are tortured there, some murdered. The Camp Doctor is the parish doctor who has been called in specially. For a long time he records some harmless cause of death or other. (The 'heart-flesh degeneration' of a gypsy woman is, however , not his invention). But one day he calls in the State Attorney's Office. The files relating to the ensuing investigation are extant and form the basis for Ludwig Laher's literary work. It makes use -- in a sometimes chilling way -- of the language and logic of the murderers, but at the same time introduces a collective narrator and lets him follow the horrific events once again from the 1940s point of view, and then again from today's viewpoint. Laher also pursues the perpetrators into the resurrected Austria, and unfolds the later court proceedin

Genres: History

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Norto Kasie · Rating 5 out of 5]

definitiv nicht so schnell gelesen wie ich gedacht hätte, hab schon immer längere pausen machen müssen

augenöffnend, grauenvoll, schmerzhaft - vor allem wenn man selbst örtlichen Bezug hat

bin sehr dankbar für die anmerkungen & das nachwort, weils auch noch sehr interessant zu lesen war