Kapo

by Aleksandar Tišma

Vilko Lamian, der verfolgte Jude, schlägt sich als Kapo auf die Seite der Unterdrücker. Nach dem Krieg wird er seine Ängste und Obsessionen nicht mehr los. Vor allem verfolgt ihn das Bild einer Frau, Helena Lifka, deren Notsituation im Lager er ausnutzte, um sie sich sexuell gefügig zu machen. Tisma zeigt uns die Innenansicht des Täters, der zum Mörder wurde, weil er überleben wollte. Der erschütterndste und eindringlichste von Tismas Holocaust-Romanen.

Genres: Fiction, Holocaust, Historical Fiction, World War II, Novels, Serbian Literature, Jewish

341 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Aleksandar Tišma (rođen 16. januara 1924. u Horgošu, preminuo 16. februara 2003. u Novom Sadu) je bio jugoslovenski i srpski pesnik i pisac. U njegovim delima najviše su zastupljene lirske pesme, zatim romani i novele.

Bio je urednik Letopisa Matice srpske u periodu od 1969. do 1973.

Osnovnu školu i gimnaziju pohađao je u Novom Sadu. Maturirao je 1942. godine. U Budimpešti je studirao (od 1942. do 1943.) ekonomiju pa romanistiku. Stupio je u narodnooslobodilačku borbu decembra 1944. godine. Demobilisan je novembra 1945. godine, nakon čega se zaposlio kao novinar u Novom Sadu, u „Slobodnoj Vojvodini“, a zatim, 1947. godine, u Beogradu, u „Borbi“. Na beogradskom Filozofskom fakultetu 1954 godine diplomirao je anglistiku. Od 1949. je živeo u Novom Sadu i radio u izdavačkom preduzeću „Matica srpska“, najpre kao sekretar, a posle i kao urednik.

Tišma je nosilac više nagrada za prozu, poeziju i prevodilaštvo.


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English:


Aleksandar Tišma (1924–2003) was a Serbian writer of significant acclaim, known for his exploration of the human condition during and after World War II. Born in the city of Horgoš, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Tišma was of mixed heritage, with a Serbian father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, a background that profoundly influenced his literary perspective.

Tišma's early life was marked by the tumultuous events of World War II. He witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and the complexities of identity in a region plagued by ethnic tensions. These experiences became central themes in his work, which often delved into the moral ambiguities of war, guilt, and the long shadows cast by historical trauma.

He studied in Budapest and Belgrade, and eventually settled in Novi Sad, where he worked as a journalist and editor before dedicating himself fully to writing. Tišma's breakthrough came with the novel The Use of Man (1976), which is often regarded as one of his most powerful works. The novel explores the lives of a group of people before, during, and after the war, dissecting the devastating impact of the conflict on their psyches and relationships.

Another significant work, Kapo (1987), further established Tišma's reputation as a masterful chronicler of human frailty and complicity in evil. This novel, which tells the story of a Jewish concentration camp inmate who becomes a kapo (a prisoner assigned to supervise other prisoners), raises difficult questions about survival, collaboration, and the corrupting influence of power.

Throughout his career, Tišma wrote with a stark, unflinching style, often employing sparse language to convey the depth of his characters' suffering. His works are marked by a deep empathy for his characters, even as he explores their darkest impulses and moral failings.

Tišma's contributions to literature were recognized both in his homeland and internationally. His work was translated into many languages, bringing his harrowing yet insightful depictions of life in wartime Eastern Europe to a global audience. He received numerous awards, including the prestigious NIN Award, one of the highest literary honors in the former Yugoslavia.

Aleksandar Tišma passed away in 2003, but his legacy endures through his powerful body of work, which continues to resonate with readers and offers a profound exploration of the complexities of human nature in the face of atrocity.

Reviews

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnífica novela de incómoda lectura.

Incómoda por varias razones. La primera es el sentimiento de compasión que, a mi pesar, sentí hacia el protagonista de esta historia. Vilko Lamian tuvo la mala suerte de nacer en una familia judía en la peor época posible. Siendo alguien que nunca quiso tener nada que ver con la comunidad hebrea —fue incluso bautizado como católico y no circuncidado— sufrió su mismo destino.

La segunda surge de una pregunta a la que nos enfrenta la novela: ¿qué habríamos hecho nosotros en esa misma situación? ¿A qué nos podría haber llevado ese fuerte instinto que nos arrastra ante “la tarea de sobrevivir pese a todo”?

“… no ante la tarea, porque la propia naturaleza se lo imponía a todos, sino ante la crispación causada por la imposibilidad de cumplirla… la crispación los alineaba en los Komandos, en los escuadrones, movía sus pies en las marchas, hacía resonar sus voces en el canto, los incitaba a la abyección, a la adulación, a la acumulación y a soportar la humillación si era preciso, si con ello el bocado podía ser mayor, si con ella la perspectiva del instante siguiente podía consolidarse”

Gracias a una arriesgada y afortuna jugada, Lamian llegó a ocupar el puesto de Kapo (recluso de los campos de concentración al que se le daban ciertas responsabilidades sobre los presos a cambio de gozar de algunos privilegios), quedando bajo la protección de un jefe de la SS para el que debía conseguir el oro que los judíos traían consigo. Mantener el puesto de Kapo suponía estar dispuesto a hacer ciertas cosas (“había roto cabezas a bastonazos, había tirado a los hombres al agua para ahogarlos, había comprado la sumisión de las deportadas famélicas por un trozo de pan y un sorbo de leche”) y, aunque Lamian hubiera preferido no hacerlas, tampoco se arrepentía de ello: en realidad lo único que hizo, piensa, fue acelerar el fin de los otros para retrasar el suyo.

“Había que pasar por la impudicia del frío y la amenaza de muerte para comprender, había que vivir aquellas noches y días de estar al acecho, de hambre, de alucinaciones febriles…”

Gracias a ello, Lamian consiguió sobrevivir al campo de concentración, pero en realidad nunca salió de él. Vivió el resto de su vida bajo el miedo a ser descubierto, con la sensación de que en cualquier momento lo llevarían a la cámara de gas.

“Vienen a desenmascararme, a escupirme, a atraparme y ponerme a sus pies, para pisotearme y darme de palos… me exhibirán como un engendro monstruoso… convertirán mi nombre en el equivalente del mal… podía suceder en cualquier parte del país, en cualquier lugar habitado...”

Ese miedo se agudizó hasta niveles insoportables cuando, cuarenta años después y por accidente, se enteró de que una de las mujeres a las que violó en el campo, una de esas a las que compró su sumisión por un trozo de pan y un sorbo de leche, había sobrevivido y no vivía muy lejos.

“Todas ellas eran frutas condenadas a pudrirse, arrojadas al montón, al olor infecto del campo, pero allí estaba él, el Kapo de los talleres, para, antes de que la descomposición, el moho, la pestilencia, se adueñaran de ellas, recoger y apartar a las mejores, las más conservadas, morder su carne aún entera, exprimir su dulzura antes de devolverlas al montón donde se reintegrarían al proceso de destrucción al que, con o sin él, estaban destinadas.”

Lamian empezó su busca. Quizás porque en el fondo sentía remordimientos. Los abusos y las violaciones de reclusas no era lo mismo que usar la porra con los presos, eso no le producía ninguna exaltación, era algo que tenía que hacer para mantener su estatus, para conservar la vida. Lo de las presas era distinto, nadie se lo exigía, solo con ellas experimentaba el poder que le otorgaba su cargo. Quizás también porque, ya cercana su muerte, necesitaba confiarse a alguien, descargar su conciencia y lo mismo daba si lo que recibía era la condena o el perdón. Quizá pensara que alguno de ellos era el verdadero motivo, pero lo más probable es que simplemente quisiera evitar la venganza.

En fin, la última de las razones de mi incomodidad venía de estar leyendo un libro sobre el holocausto teniendo tan presente el conflicto palestino-israelí. Una incomodidad que se agravaba al considerar una cobardía por parte del autor elegir como protagonista a un “mal judío”, como si solo un “mal judío” pudiera ser capaz de estos actos. No solo eso. Si bien los Kapos eran mayormente delincuentes comunes o presos políticos, también hubo judíos entre ellos, herederos en algunos casos de los Consejos que organizaron la vida en los guetos, y que Vilko Lamian adquiriera el cargo gracias a suplantar la personalidad de un comunista asesinado en el campo me parecía esquivar la cuestión. Al final me llevé una gran alegría, y me reconcilié con el autor, cuando encontré el siguiente párrafo:

“Los fuertes estaban todos en Israel, entre sus hijos que habían nacido allí y que ahora encerraban a otros con alambradas, no abriéndolas más que para dejar entrar a los mercenarios que degollarían en su lugar…”

Aleksandar Tišma, mucho menos conocido que Kertész o Primo Levi, ha escrito posiblemente las mejores novelas sobre el holocausto… o eso me parece a mí. (Premio nacional a la mejor traducción de 2005 a Luisa Fernanda Garrido Ramos).

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kapo was an acronym of German words that meant “camp guard” in the concentration camps of WW II. Although the kapos were themselves prisoners, they were forced to beat and kill others and lug bodies out of the gas ovens. This is the horrible story, a biography if you will, of a kapo who was himself born Jewish but brought up Christian by parents who foresaw what was on the horizon for them.

His story is largely told from old age looking back in flashbacks on the evils – beatings and killings he was forced to do. But his conscience suffers even more from the particular evils he initiated. As a kapo he had a private shack to live in and access to extra food. So he used his power and position to entice starving women prisoners to give him sex. We also get flashbacks to his youth and how he dealt with his ambiguous upbringing as part-Christian, part Jew in Romania. (The book is translated from the Romanian.) His nominal Christianity did not prevent him from being sent to a concentration camp, which is how he ended up as a kapo.

In his old age he becomes obsessed with finding one particular woman he abused whom he assumes is still alive so that he can confess to her. His search for her; his fear of being uncovered and his flashbacks make up most of the novel.

[Aleksandar Šegrt · Rating 5 out of 5]

negde sam čitao da je ključ "uspeha" organizatora masovnih zločina dehumanizacija žrtava (što je sasvim logično ako čovek razmisli o tome). autor ovde izvodi kontraproces; prikazuje ljudsku stranu tih kukavnih ljudi. sve to dodatno pojačava strahotu saznanja šta je čovek u stanju da uradi drugom čoveku.
veliki je majstor tišma, to sam znao i pre. ipak, moja sledeća knjiga biće na temu klinaca sa koledža koji po čitave dane piju, drogiraju i jebavaju se, hvala.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Who knows how many had committed some crime, yet continued to live among people, and lived to die the sort of death that others died? Hundreds of them, now resting peacefully, at one with nature, merged with the earth from which grew the lush, pristine grass and where roots of lovely, leafy trees drew nourishment, ignorant of the filth that had rotted there. For at a certain point of decay, filth and purity became one, both reduced to their chemical elements, all of the peculiarities of their origins stripped away."

Tišma's loose trilogy which consists of 'The Book of Blam', 'The Use of Man' and 'Kapo' are probably unmatched when it comes to the brutality described during the Holocaust. The imagery and selection of words he chooses are so descriptive, so haunting, creating a depressive aura hazily languishing above our heads.

While the first two books recount memories of the dead or show the fates of friends that are torn apart due to circumstance of World War II, this third one takes a different approach: the mind and memories of an ex-Kapo. Prior to reading this, I didn't quite know of any of the ranks involved in concentration camps and its hierarchies. A kapo, in general terms, was a prisoner that supervised labor camps of other prisoners. It shows that even in one of the worst tragedies of recent history, there were ways to survive the myriad ways of elimination during the Holocaust.

Tišma's main character Lamian's (a.k.a. Kapo Furfa) thoughts constantly drown the page with sorrow, misdeeds and devastation. The first and last sentence of the book mention the name Helena Lifka. This is what is the constant of the story. This name, over the last 40 years has created this burden within his being. The other atrocities take second place to this woman who he terrorized and cannot shake until one day, when he finds that she is alive and goes on his journey to speak to her.

The way it's written, I cannot tell if Lamian is truly on a path to forgiveness (who could really forgive what he has done?) or if this is all in his mind and if he has survivor's guilt for turning into a monster for being more like the captors than the captives? You also find a man that at once hated where and who he came from. He is running from his past and paranoid about the present. Nothing can save this man and he does not deserve to be saved.

Overall I'd give this a 4, but as any of these three can be read separately, I'd suggest not starting here. This is the most challenging of the three as it is perhaps one, if not, the most depressing read I've read. As I said before about this trilogy, I'd give it a certified 5 star status as a whole. I don't think anything in the lexicon of world fiction can come close to describing the travesty and turpitude of what we as humans can do to one another like these books have done.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kapo is the 3d novel in Aleksandar Tisma's trilogy about WWII and the Holocaust. It's the story of Lamian, a Bosnian Jew who served the Germans at Auschwitz as a kapo, a prisoner who helped supervise and sometimes brutalize fellow prisoners in return for special privileges from the SS jailers and executioners. The greatest privilege, as David Rieff's "Afterword" makes clear, is the chance to survive. Lamian does. In the chaos created by the frenzy of removals and killing as the advancing Soviets threaten to liberate the camp, he's one of those who escapes. After the war he settles in Banja Luka and works for the railroad while living in constant fear that he'll be recognized and exposed as one who collaborated against his fellow Jews. One day--I think it's 1983--he learns about and sees one of the women he raped in the camp. Frightened he'll be brought to a reckoning as well as filled with guilt, he begins to search for the woman.

Lamian's mind has never been able to let go of the war or the camp. He dwells on what he saw and the brutal acts he was coerced into committing: killing, carrying the bodies, feeding the ovens. The elaborate system he uses to wring sex from starving prisoners in exchange for extra morsels of food is outside German scrutiny and only possible through his status as a kapo. In what becomes a novel about guilt, Lamian constantly relives scenes from the camp. The novel swings back and forth between the horrific past and the guilty present. He relates everything he sees in his current life, everyone he meets, to the camps. As you might expect, it's a dark novel and sometimes not pleasant reading. Yet it's compelling as a story and always interesting as Lamian moves toward the forgiveness he craves. His furtive life after the war has been unhappy, too. He realizes his ruthlessness as a kapo allowed him to survive into the dreary postwar years, but he knows he was a victim, too.

Dark as it is, I like this novel. Its prose is free and easy to sink into. I think the translation from the Serbo-Croatian by Richard Williams must be a nimble one because the book turned into a kind of page-turner for me. I was always happy to return to it and continue Lamian's nightmarish story. I'll be reading the other 2 novels of the trilogy.

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his Afterword David Rieff says he knows “of no work of European literature that is so unrelenting in its despair. Tisma offers no hope, no consolation”. It deals with an episode of European history that is slipping from living memory, but which must not be forgotten. While I agree with Rieff’s assessment, I nevertheless recommend this brilliantly constructed and ethically lucid work to readers of a stout heart.

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Der, während des Krieges, bedrohte serbische Jude Vilko Lamian wechselt die Identität und handelt nun auf der Seite der Täter als Kapo Furfa. In dieser Zeit macht er sich Frauen gefügig, beschenkt sie und versorgt sie mit zusätzlicher Nahrung. Helene Lifka nimmt dabei einen besonderen Stellenwert ein. Als Überlebender des Krieges nach Hause zurück gekehrt, plagen ihn Ängste und Obsessionen über seine Taten. Einzig Helene Lifka könnte ihm helfen, davon loszukommen, Er sucht sie, findet unter der Adresse eine älter gewordene Frau. Bei einem Besuch erfährt er die Wahrheit, das Buch kommt hier zu einem großartig offenen Schluss. Großartig, wie alle vorherigen 3 Bände.

[Chłopaki Czytają · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dziękuję ArtRage za wydanie tej powieści. Wspaniała.
edit:
To powieść wybitna, sięgająca do najmroczniejszych miejsc w człowieczeństwie. To jądro ciemności i zła. Ale też tego co robimy w momentach, które nas sprawdzają. I jak potem nasze wybory podążają za nami. Mustread.

[Marika_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vilko Lamian urzędnik w hipotece, samotny, milkliwy i skromny (jak sam się określa) mieszkaniec Banja Luki. Ale to tylko przybrana maska mężczyzny, którego od lat męczy przeszłość - jest ocalonym z zagłady jugosłowiańskim żydem, a przetrwał Auschwitz dzięki swojej pozycji obozowego kapo - „bydlę, monstrum, oprawca, (…) wróg nad wrogami, zdrajca nad zdrajcami, ukryty w swojej jamie, w swoim barłogu, pod maską spokojnego obywatela, który do niczego się nie miesza”.
Wiele lat po wojnie mężczyzna przypadkowo natrafia w gazecie na nazwę miasta, z którego pochodziła jedna z jego oświęcimskich ofiar - żydówka Helena Lifka, którą wielokrotnie gwa*cił w obozie. Budzi to w nim makabryczne wspomnienia i podstanawia rzucić wszystko, by odszukać kobietę.

„Kapo” to wstrząsająca historia o tym jak łatwo zwykły człowiek może stać się bezwględnym i bezdusznym oprawcą - z chęci przeżycia, z przesiąknięcia otaczającym złem czy też z żądzy władzy nad innymi. Opis koszmarnej degeneracji człowieczeństwa w wykonaniu Tišmy jest niezwykle naturalistyczny, bezwględnie szczery. Wsadza nas w głowę i myśli kata, niczego nie ukrywa, nie szczędzi detali. Autor posługuje się też sugestywnym zabiegiem formalnym, w którym narrator Vilko płynnie zmienia perspektywę z jednoosobowej w trzecioosobową (często w tym samym akapicie). Można to odczytać jako próbę zdystansowania się narratora od własnego doświadczenia.

Opisy są tak potworne, że musiałam ją co chwilę odkładać, by się z nich otrząsnąć. Takie podejście autora jest jednak zasadne, czytanie tej książki ma być niekomfortowe, ma nas oburzyć i przerazić. Ale nie same opisy są tutaj najbardziej straszne, a to co ta historia uświadamia, a mianowicie, że zło jest piekielnie ludzkie, tak samo ludzkie jak pragnienie życia, kiedy znajdujemy się w sytuacji zagrożenia.
Czytajcie, bardzo warto.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

”One corruption in exchange for another, and this infiltrated their blood…”

Kapos were inmates selected to be overseers of other prisoners to maintain order in concentration camps. Nobel Prize laureate Imre Kertész questioned if they were “victim[s] or perpetrator[s].” Primo Levi went further. “[N]o one is authorised to judge them, not those who lived through the experience of the Lager and even less those who did not live through it.” Both Kertész and Levi are far too lenient. Their reasoning leads to a conclusion that little difference exists between Kapos and, for example, the post-World War II mythos of “innocent bystanders,” Mitläufer. Their logic comes close to absolving atrocities carried out in the names of nations, movements, or religions. Reckonings, accountings of individual decisions and deeds are necessary. We don't need equivocations, rationalizations, or acquittals. Aleksandar Tišma’s novel Kapo only underscores how mistaken such blanket exonerations are. Kapos were reprehensible people making conscious decisions and among the very worst of innumerable monsters who make the machinery of genocide operate as efficiently as possible.

Lamian (I don’t recall a first name ever being used) was a Kapo who survived Auschwitz. Born in Croatia between the world wars, his Jewish parents convert him Catholicism, hoping to spare him the degradations of living in an anti-Semitic world. Despite their love and concern for him, he becomes a pathetic, psychically selfish, irretrievably damaged man. He is incapable of relating to or empathizing with others, even when they try to show him love and care. Yet he is offended when others do so with him. When his “Jewishness” becomes politically insurmountable, leading him to be rounded up in Zagreb by Croatian fascists to killed to be eliminated, he takes on the identity of a dead Gentile who is also destined for Auschwitz, where he becomes a Kapo, more precisely, “that he must become a Kapo.”

“He no longer belonged to that corrupt race, he belonged only to himself, to his own body, which strove to vent itself, to burst its chains – in order to live."

Living for Kapos means creating chains for others, but they cannot escape becoming entwined themselves. Lamian rationalizes letting children innocently play games when he knows he will soon herd them into gas chambers, collect their bodies, and bring them to the crematoriums. The inevitability of the facts takes over his free will:

“He had hastened to carry out the truth, to carry it out in all its rigor, beating those who didn’t obey immediately. Because he…believed that to ignore the truth did no good, only harm.”

Lamian, like other Kapos, is

“…condemned to death like the rest of that great heap of flesh, but allowed to postpone their death by hastening it for others.”

Lamian’s truths include extracting the gold fillings from the teeth from Auschwitz’s dead. Gold he collects for his Nazi patron, gold he helps his patron escape with as both survive the liberation of Auschwitz. His truths include raping and tormenting a Jewish girl. One who also survives Auschwitz. And decades later, after he has made his way back to Yugoslavia, he resettles in Banja Luka.

“He had chosen that sleepy town among the mountains as a place to wait, peering out, for the hand of revenge sooner or later to clap down on him. Hiding, pulling into himself, fattening his body to alter his appearance, keeping silent so his voice would not be recognized, squinting behind dark glasses.”

And after a life of isolated anonymity, after he qualifies for retirement, he searches for the girl from Auschwitz, now an old woman. He is on a quest to find her. Is it to satisfy himself by tormenting her? Or to satisfy some perverse, sick reunion? Because

“the images trapped in the brain could not be cleaned away…”

He desperately wants to clean them away. Because like an authentic Kapo, he believes himself to be the real victim.

Tišma crafts a story that lingers. Actually, more than that. One that reminds the reader that Kapos have existed throughout history, probably never more so than today. They are our neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances, and friends. And sometimes they are even us.

[Maria Beltrami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una cavalcata attraverso l'orrore. Orrore del lager e delle sue abiezioni, orrore dello sprofondamento morale di un uomo che per raggranellare un istante in più di una vita priva di dignità tortura e uccide i suoi simili, orre di un senso di colpa così mostruoso da ridurre quella vita guadagnata a una morte dell'anima. E come unico riscatto a quell'orrore, a una costante, tremebonda paura, il miraggio di ritrovare quell'unica prigioniera della quale il protagonista intuisce l'essersi salvata. Ma l'orrore non lo risparmierà nemmeno in questo, in fondo siamo in ambiente ebraico e la confessione non esiste, nemmeno tra simili, e quindi questa donna, questo agognato sgravamento della coscienza, verrà vanificato dalla morte.
Uno dei libri più terribili che mi sia mai capitato di leggere, eppure non vorrei non averlo letto.

[Elwira Księgarka na regale · Rating 5 out of 5]

„A jednak kiedy popłynęły łzy z oczu Heleny Lifki, nie rozpoznał w nich swoich, żydowskich łez. Bo wtedy nie był już Żydem, tylko kapo, nie należałem do warstwy poniżonych, lecz do siebie, swojego ciała, które chciało się obnażyć, rozpaść, aby przeżyć.”

Trudno przy tej książce powiedzieć : koniecznie ją przeczytajcie.

Dlaczego trudno? Bo jest niemożliwa do zniesienia i udźwignięcia. Jest cholernie niewygodna. Momentami ohydna, pełna obrazów żywej przemocy, która pali skórę czytelnika. Mamy cierpieć razem z ofiarami, ale jesteśmy też zmuszeni wejść w tę historię oczami i duszą oprawcy. A tam rzadko kto z nas ma odwagę i chęć zajrzeć.

Handlarz życia. Zamieniacz. Kapo. Jak byście Wy nazwali kogoś, kto kolaboruje z wrogiem, wykonuje najgorsze z rozkazów, by przetrwać ? Lamian, tytułowy kapo, nigdy nie robił nic, by ludzie mogli zapomnieć o Zagładzie. „On zagładę tylko przyspieszał, wykonując rozkazy w całej ich surowości.” Anioł śmierci, przeprowadzający na drugą stronę, bezwzględny, bez namysłu. Wszystko, by ocalić siebie, a potem żyć tak, by nikt cię nie pamiętał, nie rozpoznał, nie wyróżniać się z tłumu. Przemknąć niezauważonym przez życie. Okazuje się jednak pewnego dnia, że nie da się go przeżyć bez wyrzutów sumienia i strachu czającego się każdego dnia. Strachu przed byciem rozpoznanym, schwytanym i rozerwanym. Uczucie duszności w tej powieści jest rozpisane na każdą stronę, nie ma ucieczki i przerwy od okrutnej mechaniczności Żyda, który, by przetrwać postanawia krzywdzić swój własny naród i każdego, kogo mu się wskaże. Tytułowy kapo spędza życie na wiecznym udawaniu. Najpierw zostaje ochrzczony, by udawać katolika, a gdy trafia do obozu skrywa swoje żydowskie korzenie, by wcielić się w kata.

Aleksandar Tisma tworzy dzieło jednocześnie nieznośne i nieodkładalne. „Kapo” jest ostatnią częścią tzw. trylogii żydowskiej, w której autor eksploruje kwestie Zagłady, winy, pamięci i życia po tym wszystkim. Autor wykreował szczegółowy portret dehumanizacji jednostki i mechanizmów przetrwania, jakich potrafi chwycić się jednostka, by ocalić swoje marne jestestwo. Głęboko psychologiczny język pełen chirurgicznej precyzji, brutalnej szczerości i szczegółowych opisów obozowych zbrodni sprawia, że podczas lektury potrzeba się zatrzymać i odetchnąć, a potem wrócić i dalej próbować zrozumieć to, co najtrudniejsze: Dlaczego? To dzieło zostawia czytelnika jednak z jednym z najbardziej nieznośnych pytań: czy kat może być jednocześnie ofiarą? Czy jeśli tak, to czy można mu w pewien sposób wybaczyć?

„Kapo” z pewnością będzie Was nawiedzał i nie opuści Waszej wyobraźni na długo po lekturze. Nie bójcie się jednak z nią zmierzyć, bo współczesny świat dalej zmusza nas do bycia świadkiem katów i ich bezbronnych ofiar.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And now he was such a shadow, rummaging through other people's corners, bringing doubt and fear. With no justification other than his simple existence, their fate. his fate."

This is a dark and disturbing novel about a Jew baptized Catholic, who gets found out anyway, and through a series of happenstances ends up as a guard at Auschwitz where he trades food for sex among the female inmates. Lamian escapes and by chance discovers decades later that the main girl he repeatedly raped is still alive, an old woman, and he obsesses over revealing himself to her while at the same time coping with his hurtling descent into paranoia and anxiety.
Is he repentant? Who can say? Tišma's skill lies in deftly crafting the inside of a cretin's morbid thoughts as Lamian recalls his arrest and time in the camps while trying to track down the survivor with which he has the foulest connection. There is little light here. Tišma pulls no punches, but his near-poetic mien only makes the brutality of Lamian's story even starker.

[Vladimir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning piece of work. Well written, detailed, depressing, difficult and just so fantastically and quintessentially Central European. What I love about Tisma is the way he tackles subjects like sex and generally our relationship to the body, male desire, misogyny, how desire relates to power, shame, guilt, disgust, etc.

[Fiza Pathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Kapo' is one of the most unsettling books about the Holocaust that I have ever read. Told from the perspective of an Auschwitz Kapo who is haunted with the guilt of his past, this novel by Aleksandar Tisma can leave the reader pondering over existence & fatalism. The story is about Lamian who seeks a Jewish woman whom he sexually assaulted several times in the most perverse of circumstances at Auschwitz. As Lamian seeks for Helena Lifka, the name of the Jewish woman, he takes us down his mental agonies, his life before he was sent to the concentration camp, his interests & his other relationships which he has neglected over the years. The novel is not uplifting but tends to make one reflect on one's own life & circumstances. It makes us like Lamian understand what it means at times to be 'the other' & whether even after Auschwitz, whether we as human beings have forgotten what it really means to be human. Fatalism & a sense of existential crisis surrounds all the various characters including Lamian, taking the story forward. We realize that Lamian after leaving Auschwitz has only been existing & not living his life to the fullest. He has lost the meaning of life & there is a tendency to believe that probably the Holocaust has taught everyone past, present & future that life in itself is technically meaningless because everything seems like a huge concentration camp; this is very similar to the nihilistic & fatalistic Holocaust writers like Dino Buzzati but more so Imre Kertész whom I really like to read. Their writings like 'Kapo' makes us aware of the futility of all existence because of the monstrosity that is wickedness in the form of Auschwitz that is what humanity & people of all races are trying to get to, or avoid. Auschwitz therefore is not an episode in history nor just a culture, but it is life itself - human beings either wanting to kill their 'so called' enemies in extermination camps or avoiding being noticed & being sent to a similar camp in the process! This is a topic many people don't like to read up on, but it is quite true when you look at something as simple as the 'cancel culture' that is taking place as we speak. People go to a great extent of annihilating a person's reputation on the internet, how far are they from the desire of an extermination camp? 'Kapo' the novel by Aleksandar Tisma makes us ponder over that theme. Unlike Kertesz, there is a partial 'happy ending' to this novel but it tends to make us question reality more than comfort us. 'Kapo' also a very well written ruminative text merging the present worlds of Lamian with his atrocious acts & life at Auschwitz as a Kapo. I really was taken up with Lamian's stay in a restaurant observing the elderly man who drank beer & coffee at the same time. I also liked his meeting with a half-sleepy prostitute as well his associations with his college friend Branka. These incidents are written with the eye of a keen observer of not character details but human behavior & individuality which I appreciate in most European contemporary writers. Tisma's fatalism & nihilism comes across very meaningfully making the novel a very informative & heartfelt read. However, those of us who don't approve of reading novels that exonerate the crimes of rapists & those who had anything to do with the abuse of Jews during life at Auschwitz should steel ourselves before reading 'Kapo' because the narrative can be at times perverse; not with an intention to hurt sentiments definitely ! 'Kapo' gets 5 stars from me & I hope to read more novels by Tisma in the near future.

[Daphna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of Lamian, a Jew who becomes a cruel and brutish Kapo, one who wields the limited power he has to abuse and dominate others. Even to himself he doesn’t pretend that his actions are for the sole purpose of ensuring his survival.

Through the character of Lamian the novel deals primarily with human nature and the perennial question of nature versus circumstances. Lamian has felt his “otherness” since well before the war and the camps. It stemmed from his being Jewish, born to a different and ostracized tribe that had never completely assimilated into the societies in which it lived in Eastern Europe. His parents do everything in their power to provide him with the means to sever his connection to his origins and live a life unburdened by its history.
When he leaves home for university, he has the potential to strike out on his own and create a life separate from the heritage that marks him as different. But at that pivotal point of his life, Lamian makes an informed choice to disassociate himself from society in general. He avoids any meaningful human contact, he doesn’t mingle, and he chooses to remain solitary and set apart.

His being Jewish is too simple an explanation of his character. It goes much deeper. I tend to think that had he not been Jewish, he would non-the-less have been different and set apart. This is a man who well before the camps wasn’t able to express empathy or compassion for anyone, not for his parents, nor for the woman who loved him. I see a Shakespearian fatal flaw in his nature that informs the choices he makes in his life before, during and after his release from the camps. No doubt this flaw in his nature is exacerbated by his being Jewish and by the horrific circumstances of the camps.

Lamian has hidden his true self throughout his youth, and he hides it after his release. Only in the camps does he become reconciled with his disparity and only there does he feel free to unleash the sociopathic narcissism that seems to me to have simmered in him all along. It becomes evident that what sets him apart is deeply embedded in his nature.

The novel follows Lamian’s journey to locate and meet with one of his young victims who survived. We might at first believe that this might be, finally, an odyssey of contrition and a search for forgiveness and redemption. But is it?

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lamian, a Jewish man who survived the war by becoming a Kapo, a prisoner serving as a camp guard in order to save himself, is haunted in the years after by his irredeemable acts of cruelty.
Whilst I understand that the book is about the lengths people will go to to survive, I felt the perspective was not necessary. There are hideous rape scenes in this book, from Lamian's perspective, and then so much of the book thereafter is just vile descriptions of women. It feels like it takes up half of the story. Why was this necessary? I don't agree with stories about sexual assault against women being told by a man, no matter the context. It's not their story to tell.
Would not recommend this.

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Primo Levi shows us how suffering can ennoble, in Kapo, Aleksandar Tišma paints a visceral picture of how brutalisation breeds brutalisation, how the victim becomes perpetrator. There is no let-up or relief in Kapo and the narrative drama is the driven by the psychosexual horrors that continually circulate around the mind of the narrator.

One of the most tense and eventful scenes of the novel is in a café where everyone just minds their own business as the protagonist drives himself half crazy imagining what they might be thinking, what they might have done, and what they might do when they inevitably read on his face the crimes he committed half a lifetime ago.

Kapo is not a novel for the faint hearted, but it has in spades a sort of tragic grandeur and profound seriousness which is sometimes associated with communist-era Eastern Europe.

[Czszelk · Rating 4 out of 5]

War is hell

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vilko Lamian, the Jewish kapo of this novel’s title, survived Auschwitz by helping SS guards carry out their atrocities. For the next four decades, he has lived in fear of being discovered by survivors when he returns to his native town. Yet—creepily-- he has also imbibed the Nazis’ anti-Semitism.

Thus, the most harrowing parts of this powerful novel are not the scenes in Auschwitz, but rather, the scenes in Lamian’s mind.

As a kapo at Auschwitz (in addition to carrying corpses and murdering fellow prisoners), Lamian regularly selected two female inmates to rape in a secret hideaway, rewarding them with precious bread, butter, milk, and ham. He became fascinated in particular with one woman, Helena Lifka, a fellow Yugoslavian Jew. As the novel begins, in 1983, he has decided that he must find her and beg her forgiveness.

Kapo is the third in a trilogy by the award-winning Hungarian-Jewish writer Aleksandar Tisma. First published in 1987, it has now been reissued in a translation by Richard Williams.

Tisma’s accomplishment in this book is not only to explore the mindset of someone who could be said to be a victim as much as a collaborator. He also forces the reader to ask: If I were Helena, would I denounce Lamian?

(Adapted from my review in the New York Journal of Books)
https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book...

[Aleksandra Gratka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vilko Lamian, jugosłowiański Żyd, przeżył Auschwitz. Jest podstarzałym urzędnikiem, a jego codzienność byłaby nudna i zwyczajna, gdyby nie przeszłość. Bo Lamian przeżył za cenę, o której powiedzieć "wysoka", to nic nie powiedzieć. Teraz obóz znienacka wyświetla mu się przed oczami, teraz każdy człowiek może być tym, który w Lamianie rozpozna oprawcę.
Gdy porusza się temat wojny, obozów koncentracyjnych, zawsze jest ta myśl - nie wiadomo, jak my byśmy się zachowali, więc ostrożnie z oceną. Tyle że są czyny i są decyzje, których nie da się NIE ocenić. Lamian był kapo. Przeżył, bo nie zawahał się, gdy trzeba było podjąć decyzję - moje życie albo jego. W dodatku, a może - przede wszystkim - wykorzystywał swoją pozycję. Siał strach wśród tych, którzy niżej od niego. Wybierał więźniarki i je gwałcił, rozkoszując się łzami i przerażeniem. Słodził obrzydliwy czyn dodatkowymi racjami żywnościowymi.
Na ślad jednej ze swych ofiar - Heleny Lifki, trafił długo po wojnie i zaczął ją obsesyjnie tropić. Po co? Żeby prosić o wybaczenie? Wątpię. Najpierw trochę kojarzył mi się z Żydem z epilogu "Innego świata", który opowiadając Grudzińskiemu o swoim strasznym obozowym czynie, prosi o słowo "rozumiem". Lamian jednak nie potrzebuje zrozumienia, ba, nie szuka wybaczenia. Dla mnie jest odrażającą kreaturą, która myśli tylko o sobie.
W obozie, jako przecież człowiek bez znaczenia, siłę mógł pokazać tylko w tej obskurnej skrytce, gdy miał przed sobą nagie, przerażone kobiety. Wojnę przeżył kosztem innych, powojenne życie też było egoistyczne - zawsze myślał tylko o sobie. Ani razu nie zastanowił się, co mógłby wywołać swoją zdecydowanie nieoczekiwaną wizytą u Heleny.

Mam za sobą tak wiele literatury obozowej, naprawdę wiem, co to zlagrowanie, wiem, że człowiek w sytuacji ekstremalnej zdolny jest do wszystkiego, że obóz to inne prawa, że instynkt przetrwania, ale... Nie ma we mnie ani krzty pozytywnych uczuć do bohatera. Nie współczuję mu tego, że wyszedł z piekła i trwa w czyśćcu. Tacy jak on powinni wpaść w łapy typów rodem z "Bękartów wojny" Tarantino, którzy wiedzieli, co zrobić, by zbrodniarze wojenni nie zdołali ukryć się w tłumie.

Wybitna powieść, dająca sporo do myślenia.

[Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

unlike anything I have ever read. despite its fictional status, Kapo brings the horror of the Holocaust into the reader's mind in ways that challenge our conception of morality. Lamian is on a quest to find Helena Lifka, a woman whom he terrorized in Auschwitz as a kapo, a prisoner enlisted by the Nazis as a guard in a cruel method of pinning victim against victim. throughout the story, Lamian is old, the war is over and those who survived the concentration camps are scattered and trying to move on with life, to live and continue. but Lamian is stuck, his mind wanders; everything he sees and experiences is tainted by unimaginable horror. Tišma writes in fluid and organic prose, time is not important--at any moment Lamian will descend into descriptive analysis of suffering at scale, of starvation, torture, and misery untold. The nature of the novel is disconcerting in that there is little one can do to expect when it will become a horrific memoir of pain and cruelty, of Lamian's own complicity in the crimes committed during the genocide. and therein lies the heart of the novel: his fear. the man has become so paranoid in his guilt ridden old age that he behaves as if everyone knows of his misdeeds within the camps, every passing soul on the street could be the eventuality of finally being caught and tried for his crimes. he lives in agony, and in his search for Helena he seeks to exonerate his soul. Lamian is guilty of many things, but perhaps his worst sin is selfishness. he laments his own pain throughout the book, and he feels strongly that he deserves forgiveness, even sometimes seeming to demand it, he is impulsive in his misery and desire to be free of it. this book challenges our conceptions of evil, determining it as a side of human nature that perhaps can never be truly understood.

[mariuszowelektury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tadeusz Borowski, Gustaw Herling Grudziński, Imre Kertesz przyzwyczaili nas do pokazywania człowieka zlagrowanego - istoty sprowadzonej do biologicznego postrzegania świata, w którym dobro i zło przestają istnieć.

Aleksandar Tišma idzie jednak dalej - jego bohater by przeżyć, przyjmuje rolę kata. Viko Lamian chorwacki Żyd wychowany w tradycji katolickiej najpierw trafia do Jasenova, skąd przed pewną śmiercią ucieka do Auschwitz. Ceną za to jest stanie się trybikiem w machinie śmierci, którą stara sobie rekompensować nadużywaniem władzy wobec więźniarek.

Narracja przebiega dwutorowo: teraźniejszość (koniec lat 70.) i retrospekcje. Przeszłości nie daje się odgrodzić. Zwyczajne obrazy codzienności przechodzą w obozowe sceny, tak jakby Lamian ciągle żył w tamtym świecie. Kulminacja to odkrycie, że jedna z kobiet nadal żyje. Pojawia się pragnienie wyznania winy, uzyskania rozgrzeszenia.

Lamian przypomina tezę Arendt o banalności zła - dał się wciągnąć w zbrodnię. Z drugiej strony nie może zapomnieć, że to co czynił jest nieodwracalnym okrucieństwem, którego nic i nikt nie zmieni. Obóz trwa, poczucie winy staje się jego przedłużeniem. Chociaż czasem nie sposób oprzeć się myśli, że w gruncie rzeczy Viko chce zatrzeć ślad swojego obozowego życia, że tak naprawdę motywuje go lęk przed ujawnieniem prawdy.

Trudna i mocna historia, która przede wszystkim skupia sią na psychologicznym studium człowieka, który przeżył, ale to jak to zrobił wymyka się łatwemu osądowi, zmusza do myślenia o granicach moralności i o tym, co oznacza przetrwanie.

[C.L.N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kapo is an astonishingly dreary book. So much so that, no matter how well written, I can't think of a reason why I'd ever re-read it. For me to mark a book as five stars, it has to either have such carrying power that a second read would be superfluous or obviously demanding a second read. I would love to read Blood Meridian and Kaputt (both quite depressing reads), again anytime. So what makes this book different? Well, in its denudement (new word) of the protagonists desires, the novel is a circling of the drain at the bottom of the river styx. Things come to a laborious and slow stop, all accurately paced. It seems quite accurate overall...unhappily so.

[San Hernan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me ha resultado repetitivo; la idea es muy buena y, sin tantas páginas, me habría gustado pero en mi opinión sobran.
La idea de que el protagonista haya sido Kapo en el campo de concentración y, una vez libre, le atormente lo que llegó a hacer sin que nadie le obligara, le atormenta, pero sobre todo le persigue lo que le hizo a una mujer y, por casualidad, descubre que sigue viva y se debate entre ir a verla y descubrirse pese a las posibles consecuencias o no.

Mientras pasa el tiempo, desde el descubrimiento, hace su vida como buenamente puede pero los recuerdos le pesan cada día más debilitándole físicamente.
Debido a ello y a pesar de ostentar un puesto importante pide la jubilación y se va en busca de Helen, piensa que es lo que le toca por hacer para encontrar La Paz.

[Dariusz Płochocki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lektura Kapo była dla mnie doświadczeniem trudnym, momentami wręcz obciążającym emocjonalnie, ale jednocześnie niezwykle ważnym. Czytając, wielokrotnie łapałem się na niepokojącym pytaniu: gdzie przebiega granica, po której sam przestałbym się jeszcze rozpoznawać człowiekiem? Tišma nie pozwala bezpiecznie umiejscowić bohatera po „złej stronie”, bo wtedy czytelnik mógłby się od niego odciąć. Momentami miałem poczucie, że autor zmusza mnie do obserwowania zbyt blisko, bez możliwości odwrócenia wzroku — i to było doświadczenie niekomfortowe,
„Kapo” odebrałem jako opowieść o granicach człowieczeństwa — i o tym, jak łatwo historia potrafi je przesunąć.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely an interesting discussion about morality and the lengths that are justified to go to for survival. Found the text to be hard to follow and also grossly misogynistic at times.

[Christina Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think I could ever recommend this book because I can most easily describe it as tormenting, yet I will give it four stars because it is brilliant. Nor does it seek to use the Holocaust as a tool for melodrama. From the perspective of Lamian, we get an incisive look at the psychological mechanisms of anti-Semitism and misogyny. Lamian’s actions throughout the story are undoubtedly sinister, but he never orchestrated his acts. He is the embodiment of the “banality of evil,” and we see him as a pitiful creature but not necessarily one to be pitied.
I have often wondered what provokes a person to commit acts of unspeakable violence and what happens to a person after they commit these acts. Kapo is a daring exploration of these questions, and the answers are uncomfortable but very necessary.
I knocked off a star because either the prose itself was very choppy and inconsistent or the translation was too literal.

[Nasus]

Very well written but super dark and depressing. Hard to understand why author (Serbian father; Jewish Hungarian mother), who did manage to escape direct horrors/persecution during Holocaust, would write a book from the point of view of an Auschwitz Kapo. It seemed to me he was drawing at least in part on some of his personal experiences, which he must have witnessed on the sidelines and heard stories about, even though he wasn't in a camp. Sadly I would not recommend this b/c it is too horrid to read and there is not even an iota of redemption. The main character is a bad person even before the war and doesn't ever redeem himself in the slightest.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was the September 2021 New York Review Books selection. Set in Serbia post WWII, a former Kapo from the concentration camps thinks he sees a woman he raped and he becomes filled with dread that he will be exposed and charged with war crimes. As much as he dreads being exposed, he yearns to reconnect with this woman for whom he also yearned in the camp in the eternal desire all humans have to be connected and loved. Lamin (not his real name as he’s been living incognito since his escape from the camps) decides to find Helena and travels to Zagreb all the while being almost incomprehensible to being free since he is so trapped in the vile and degrading life he experienced in the camps nothing seems real but that time. Being Jewish Lamin senses his “otherness” too created from the Nazi persecution of Jews. This “otherness” traps Lamin as well. He yearns to connect but just doesn’t know how to - something he could not do as well in his pre-camp life. His “otherness” seems to trap him but it is really his weakness and cowardice that holds him back. Told from the perspective of Lamin’s inner turmoil, his despair is so palpable and debilitating. At the end, learning Helena has died, Lamin just wants to find a small place or box which he never has to leave. This is such a sad, sad story.