Les élus

by Steve Sem-Sandberg, Johanna Chatellard-Schapira (Translator), Emmanuel Curtil (Translator)

En 1941, à Vienne, l'hôpital du Spiegelgrund a été transformé par les nazis en un centre pour enfants handicapés et jeunes délinquants. Jour après jour, Adrian, Hannes et Julius, pensionnaires de la maison de redressement, tentent d'exorciser l'horreur. Dans un époustouflant ballet de voix tour à tour intérieures et extérieures, ils racontent l'enfer qu'ils vivent et la mort qui les guette au pavillon 15, ou l'on extermine les " indésirables ". Un récit d'une incroyable puissance romanesque, lauréat du prix Médicis étranger 2016.

" Avec Les Élus , Steve Sem-Sandberg nous replonge dans l'horreur du nazisme. Un romancier à découvrir de toute urgence ! " Oriane Jeancourt Galignani, Transfuge

Traduit du suédois par Johanna Chatellard-Schapira et Emmanuel Curtil

Prix Médicis étranger 2016

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Holocaust, War, World War II, Historical, Swedish Literature

605 pages, Pocket Book

First published September 30, 2014

About the author

Steve Sem-Sandberg is a Swedish journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer and translator. He is the author of The Emperor of Lies . Sem-Sandberg divides his time between Vienna and Stockholm.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

This most heartrending of novels is, I humbly suggest, unreadable. I will go further – my base, ignoble heart is telling me that all the huge praise this novel gets is from people who have not read every page of it. And more – I would bet all the reviewers skipped and skipped and skipped again, and found out to their dismay that page 237 was almost replicated on page 383, and the abuses rained down on children in chapter two had only been slightly modified by chapter 17.

I think the vast praise and the 5 star reviews are due to this novel’s untouchable, almost holy subject, which is, the Nazi euthanasia program for severely disabled children. There were a few facilities set up to perform this horrible task and The Chosen Ones tells the story of Am Spiegelgrund, a clinic in Vienna, through the eyes of a nurse and one of the boys who survived. It operated from 1940 to 1945 and around 800 children were killed there.

This is a non-fiction novel, like In Cold Blood or The Executioner’s Song , meaning that everything included is factual. The problem here is that unlike those two brilliant achievements, The Chosen Ones has no narrative. The author presents the daily grind of minor or major outrages perpetrated on various children by various medical personnel. Emotion is drained out of each sentence, as the awfulness speaks for itself. But what reader can take 557 pages of minutely described misery heaped on completely defenseless children?

Here are some random samples so you can see what I mean :

Page 73

Soon afterwards, she is called to pavilion 17, where a boy is banging his head against the wall. He has to be restrained. In the other ward, a boy has come down with scarlet fever

Page 155

The staff was ordered to keep the windows open at all times, even during the raw, damp and cold days in winter, even though the children were in a very poor condition and often febrile.

Page 273

The Pelikan lad stands next to her with his face so close up against the window that his face is outlined in the condensation on the glass. Crossly, she grabs at his twitching arm and hauls him back into the day room, but Pelikan whimpers and resists, then tries to reach round her with his other arm, which she throws to the side again and again as if it were a lifeless object.

P325

The structure is a little like the one he was put in when Dr Gross measured his head on his first day at Spiegelgrund. Two nurses take a firm hold of his arms and place him in the structure, where he is to sit leaning forward on the stool… By now he is terrified. They lower the top of the steel frame down over him

Eventually there are escapes by older children and the defeat of the Nazis and liberation of the inmates, and the trial and convenient dementia of one or two perpetrators (the rest of them melt away). No spoiler there! You all knew that was going to happen. This wrap-up gets about 80 pages at the end. My hat is off to any reader who makes it that far without skipping like 50 pages at a time.

If I was rating on grounds of moral worthiness this is an obvious five star novel, but as a reading experience it’s a disaster.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books which is both monstrous and beautiful.

Sem-Sandberg has an incredible talent for character and description. The words of both main characters come in an almost stream of consciousness style, full of detail and the minutiae of daily life, that feels like the inner workings of a mind. The resulting realism adds to the tension created by the knowledge that the situation is real, the story based on real events. Together they produce a rather unsettling read, definitely not easy, but illuminating and important.


Many thanks to Steve Sem-Sandberg, Faber & Faber, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is based upon real events, although the characters are fictional. The story unfolds through the testimony and memories of two main characters; Anna Katschenka, a nurse, and Adrian Ziegler, who is a young boy at the time of events.

The book involves a care institution, ‘Am Spiegelgrund’ in Vienna. Although the clinic begins as a hospital for handicapped children, as well as for those who are deemed to be in need of care through ‘wayward’ behaviour; under the years when Austria is governed by the National Socialist German war machine, it is charged with the duty of, ‘examining and assessing all mentally deviant children’ with ‘data’ collected for scientific study. If that sounds ominous, that is because it is, as the author asks how a hospital which is meant to care for children, turns into a place of experimentation and euthanasia.

Both the central characters offer a different perspective into events. Anna Katschenka is a nurse for many years. Responsible for her parents and with a marriage to a Jewish man which is frowned upon by the authorities, she is unable to find work under the new regime. So thankful is she at being offered a job at Spiegelgrund in 1941, especially with Doctor Jekelius, a man she admires from afar, as acting medical director, that she asks no questions. In fact, she is perfect material for a clinic which makes Anna profoundly uncomfortable. What unfolds among the staff is a conspiracy of silence, as the treatment of the children who arrive is called, “part of a natural disinfection” process. Meanwhile, concerned parents – pathetic and trembling – try to press for answers and they haunt these pages as they haunt the corridors and spaces outside of the clinic in the book

Adrian Ziegler, also arrives at the clinic in 1941, albeit not so willingly. With a doubtful genetic heritage – his father labelled as a ‘gypsy’ – and a childhood filled with poverty, minor misdemeanors and domestic abuse; Adrian finds himself ricocheting through a system of foster parents and children’s homes, until he ends up at the doors of Spiegelgrund. Although much of this book is upsetting and difficult to read about - for example as Adrian is put on show in front of rows of students, as the doctor uses a pointer to highlight his racial impurities - as well as much worse, there is also much humour about his character. Adrian is a born survivor and, as we know he is recounting his story from the beginning of the novel, this is not a spoiler. As just one boy, his story represents the other, countless stories, that the reader just touch on – some more deeply than others.

This novel asks difficult questions and would be an ideal reading group choice. It looks at love, shame, complicity, secrets and conspiracies. As the war unravels and the Russians approach, the infrastructure of the country collapses and those involved with the clinic are accused. The aftermath of war, and of a policy which is utterly abhorrent , is explored in this book. How did this happen and why were only some held to account, while others denied everything and evaded blame. A thought provoking and interesting novel, I found this disturbing and yet extremely readable. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

[Josephine (Jo) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do feel really guilty about not finishing this book but I had got about a third of the way through and I just could not get into it at all. The subject matter was so sad and the characters were in a heart breaking situation but the telling of the story was so so so slow! I tried to persist as I hate to give in but I found myself thinking about tomorrows shopping and realised I had read a page and not a word had sunk in!

It would have been fascinating to fully know the story of the inmates of the Am Spiegelgrund clinic but the time it would have taken to get to the end of this ponderous tome was just not worth the effort. The stories of Anna Katschenka, a nurse, and Adrian Ziegler, a young boy who is an inmate of the clinic are so interesting and the author writes so well and describes the inmates and their surroundings so well and in great detail, but maybe there is just too much detail, it rambles a little. The only way I can describe the way it made me feel is that it was like trying to eat crackers with no butter or cheese, just to dry to manage to swallow.

I hate to give a negative review but I also have to be honest, many people have given the book four and five stars so maybe it is just me.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Setting: Wien (Vienna), Austria; 1930's-1950's.
This is a fictional account based on the true story of the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna. Initially a well-intentioned reform school for wayward boys and girls and a hospital for critically-ill children, all would change with the Nazi annexation of Austria in the run-up to the Second World War. As the institution's staff - nurses, doctors and teachers - were replaced by Nazi sympathisers, the good intentions of the institution were warped by the Nazi Party's ethnic cleansing policies and it soon became a place where physically- and mentally-ill were subjected to ill treatment and euthanasia.
The story is told largely through the eyes of a child 'inmate', Adrian Ziegler, who is dubbed by the authorities as 'part-Gypsy' and therefore untrustworthy and unreliable, and a nurse who goes to work there, Anna Katschenka. The effects of staying there (for Adrian) and working there (for Anna) are ones which last for the remainder of their lives.....
This was a lengthy but very disturbing read - the author seemed able to bring the various characters, both vulnerable child inmates and omnipotent staff, fully to life, enabling the reader to appreciate all the horrors that went on in the clinic. I have never heard of this author before and simply found this book whilst browsing my local library's shelves - certainly a read that will linger in the dark recesses of my thoughts! - 8.5/10.

[Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a 5 star read. The writing is excellent and the language is often beautiful. I had to read this quite slowly, because of its grimness. What a work of witness, all kudos to the author.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot review this book in any way except to sing its praises while acknowledging that it was a reading experience that was the equivalent of emotional beating and left in position of mental and physical prostration. I have often said that at times only literature can tell the real truth of history's nightmares. That Sem-Sandberg should create a transcendent work of literature out of the Action T4 policy of the Nazis can come as no surprise to anyone who read the author's 'Emperor of Lies' about Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski the 'emperor' of the Lodz ghetto.

Can any work of fiction replace works like 'Behold the Man' by Primo Levi or 'Fatelessness' by Imre Kertész (to name but two of countless works I should mention)? Of course not but although neither 'The Chosen Ones' or 'The Emperor of Lies' will ever achieve a fraction of the readership of such dross as 'The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas' (even by mentioning that meretricious piece of shit in the same paragraph as Levi and Kertesz I fear I have committed solecism of unpardonable vulgarity) they can stand as reproach to authors like John Boyne or Misha Defonseca who peddle fantasy and lies to achieve sales.

I cannot resist quoting the following from the review of 'The Chosen Ones' by Sebastian Barry in The Guardian (the full review is at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... and i well worth reading in its entirety):

'At the end of this long, harrowing book, there is a brief image of a lonely, forgotten graveyard. On one of the graves stands “an angel on guard”. This is a terrifying novel but its angel on guard is its author, Steve Sem-Sandberg, a novelist girded for moral battle. His last book was the monumental The Emperor of Lies, set in the Łódź ghetto in Poland during the Nazi Holocaust, which won the August prize in his native Sweden. You don’t so much read Sem-Sandberg as stand in the fiery wind of his prose. He makes his reader strangely complicit in his terrible subjects. He does not offer that tattered lifebelt of “redemption” so often thrown to the modern reader, nor much space to rest your reading eyes; but his books are only merciless because the great swaths of human enterprise they chart are themselves merciless...

'Katschenka, our deeply unheroic nurse; Dr Jekelius, one of the child-killers and later a backstreet abortionist; the child Julius Becker whose great victory is to stab himself with a stolen pair of scissors; another young patient, Felix Keuschnig, who plays the piano to call his mother to him; nurse Hedwig Blei, who keeps polishing her dead brother’s shoes as if he might rise back up like a genie, and dozens of other vivid characters – these are our companions for 576 pages. Abandoned children, killing nurses, resolute and murderous doctors: all are mercilessly, magisterially depicted. Nothing is too awful for our gaze.'

Barry concludes his review by saying:

'Some novels are described as dark, in order to alert the reader. But this novel...is as bright as a cloudless June sky under which, behind walls and doors, we go about our inexplicable human business.'

I have never read so many querulous and critical reviews of a great novel as I have on GR about this one. This is a great novel, an important novel a novel that should change you. If it doesn't you really need to take a long hard look at yourself.

[Alicia Huxtable · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to get through this book but in the end you realise that all the monotonous details ARE actually needed. It was really good reading and I'm glad I did read it.

[Jeff Koloze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every civil rights activist (i.e. right to lifer) should read Sem-Sandberg's novelization of Friedrich Zawrel's life in The Chosen Ones. American pro-lifers, especially, will find that those who support medical killing (assisted suicide and euthanasia) in this twenty-first century are using the same tactics as the Nazis did in Austria in the 1940s.

A plot summary for this 559-page novel is relatively easy. Adrian Ziegler, the fictional avatar of Zawrel, suffers in the Spiegelgrund facility in Vienna which was originally established for the care of disabled or severely-ill children. When the Nazis conquered Austria, the purposes of the institution became decidedly eugenic; the children and youths sent there were euthanized since they did not meet the Nazi ideal of a eugenically perfect race.

However, reading this novel should not be merely a view into history, as though it is just a way to pass time during the Christmas break between academic terms. The novel’s ideas are as relevant for those civil right activists who fight against medical killing today (in the forms of assisted suicide and euthanasia) as those who fought against Nazi eugenics in the 1940s.

Contemporary readers will be able to connect many Nazi ideas about race perfection with those who advocate assisted suicide and euthanasia for those whose lives are deemed less than perfect. The children who came to Spiegelgrund were simply in dire medical or psychological straits. Instead of treating their diseases, the Nazi system “treated” them by killing the patients themselves. Does anybody not see how false this logic is?

Similarly, the euphemisms for the killing of the children resound in the speeches of today’s twenty-first century medical killers. Everybody knows that dehumanization is an essential part of killing human beings. Thus, Grandma in a nursing home is not Grandma, but a “vegetable”. (How the beloved grandmother can suddenly become a zucchini is beyond me.) Similarly, the children who were chosen to be killed at the Spiegelgrund facility are murdered “like you’d be killing rats” (292; these words are italicized in the original not only to show these words as dialogue, but also to emphasize how dehumanizing they are).

People outside the institution knew what was going on inside. Spiegelgrund was where “children get the injections” (290; italics in original)—not “injections” as in ordinary shots to cure them of their diseases, but coded language for the post-war correct identification that the children were “killed by lethal injection” (481). This use of a euphemism to distort reality occurs several pages later when a child marked to “receive treatment” is rephrased in correct language to mean that “the child should be killed” (496).

Readers feel Adrian’s pain throughout the novel, not only the pain of physical suffering under the eugenicist Nazi doctors, but also the emotional pain of being falsely accused of immoral activity. Adrian is accused of perpetrating homosexual acts on other children and even soliciting staff when he himself is the victim at the hands of a despotic pedophile (254-8).

It should be no surprise that one of the Nazi eugenicists, Dr. Jekelius, becomes an abortionist after the Soviet liberation of Austria from the Nazis. Alluding to this other aspect of medical killing certainly makes the narrative consistent. After all, if someone like Jekelius could murder children by euthanizing them, he can easily murder them while they are still in the womb. When the body parts of the children murdered at Spiegelgrund (preserved for future medical research by one of the eugenicist doctors) are discovered years later, the scene reminds one of the infamous abortionist Gosnell, who kept body parts of the babies he aborted in his Philadelphia clinic (536-8). Nazi doctors and eugenicists yesterday…assisted suicide and euthanasia supporters and abortionists today: nothing has changed, except for the passage of years.

It is interesting that none of the characters supporting and implementing the Nazi medical killing, like their twenty-first century counterparts, professes a religious belief. The closest that one comes to a character who is familiar with religious language is Anna Katschenka, a nurse at the institution. When “she prays, something she hasn’t done for a long time, to the God she is convinced has long since turned his back on mankind” (295), the intelligent reader recognizes her theological ignorance at once. It is not God who has abandoned humanity, but humanity which has abandoned Him.

The novel could be just another incredibly sad reading experience were it not for a fact that Nazi eugenicist doctors and today’s medical killers (those severely educated people who think they know how we ordinary folk should live our lives—or die if they think we don’t meet their standards) fail to understand. Adrian Ziegler’s life was worth living, and he succeeded years beyond the Spiegelgrund horrors, even though he was the son of a gypsy father and a mother whose employment and mode of living were useless to the Nazi war machine. That Adrian Ziegler is just a fictionalized version of the much more successful Friedrich Zawrel—who lived to 2015, seventy years beyond the Nazi atrocities—is a further testament to the enduring respect for human life that today’s pro-life activism promotes.

[patrycja polczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sięgając po "Wybrańców" wydawało mi się, że jest to książka o szpitalu psychiatrycznym dla dorosłych. Ogromnie się pomyliłam. Placówka, w której rzecz się dzieje, nie do końca jest ośrodkiem psychiatrycznym. Pełna jest za to dzieci i ich cierpienia. Dorośli się tam oczywiście pojawiają, ale nie w charakterze pacjentów. Nie potrafię ocenić tej książki w kategorii "podobało mi się". Nie jest to książka, którą można "lubić". Oceniam raczej jej wartość i styl. Historia nie jest ani łatwa, ani przyjemna. Ta opowieść uderza jak młot w sam środek głowy i sprawia ból. Strony tej opartej na faktach książki pełne są zła i barbarzyństwa. Jeśli ktoś tego nie dostrzega, coś jest z tą osobą nie tak. Emocje, które nadal odczuwam, szybko nie miną. Nie powinno się zapominać takich historii, za to powinno się traktować je jako przestrogę. Coś takiego nigdy nie powinno było mieć miejsca, ale jeśli nie da się tego cofnąć, to należy dopilnować aby się to nigdy nie powtórzyło. Niech ta niełatwa historia będzie przestrogą. Dla każdego.

[Adri Dosi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uf.
Kniha je takový zvláštní žánr. Není možné ho zařadit přímo k non fiction, ale ani ke klasickým románům. Jde spíše o dokument anebo reportáž, dalo by se říct. Zobrazuje skutečnou událost prostřednictvím několika dominantních postav, které zde popisují to, co vidí, to, co zažívají.
Jsou zde i části s vysvětlivkami, rozhovory a podobně.
Kniha je o skutečné "zdravotnické" instituci, která vznikla poměrně dost let před vypuknutím druhé světové války ve Vídni, čili nikoliv v Německu a původně se ani tak nezaměřovala na Židy.
Byly tu zneužívány děti.. a to i zcela zdravé. Pod různými záminkami. Stačilo, když někoho zaujaly. Měly zajímavý původ. Někdo hledal určitý vzorek. Dělali na nich pokusy, týrali je, vystavovali je různým stravovacím extrémům, počasí a posílali je na smrt. Jakože eutanásie. Injekce byly ale dlouhé, bolestivé a smrt přicházela až po týdnu. Zplynování přišlo až později. Mnohdy si doktor kývl a i u zdravého dítěte chtěl mozek, tak šel.
Díky přečtení této knihy už vím, proč se tolik odmítá Aspergeru říkat, že někdo má Aspergera, ale má určitý typ autistického spektra. Potom, co jsem si pročetla a následně dogooglila, to ani já nebudu používat. Je smutné na jakých základech se postavila léčba epilepsie, diagnóza autismu a třeba i očkování spalniček.
Kniha je napsána zvláštním způsobem. Čtení není z mnoha ohledů snadné. Nejen pro obsah, ale právě i pro způsob, jak je napsána. Někdo tuto knihu dost zkritizoval a má jen 3,5 * a dokonce je takové protichůdné to, zda si ocenění zaslouží, nebo ne. No... pro mě přinesla něco, co jsem nevěděla. O pokusech vím, ale přesně o tom a v jaké míře, huu. A tak je pro mě ceněným kouskem. I když rozhodně nejde o krásnou literaturu.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate giving bad reviews and to say I read this book is a bit of a lie as I only got about a third of the way through it before giving up (something else I hate to do). I can see it is well written, the subject matter is interesting and I also acknowledge the amount of research involved. However I simply struggled with the format and the density of the prose. And there are too many other books that I want to read

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set during World War 2, this interesting book allows the reader to see inside the minds of the children patients and medical professionals at Spiegelgrund. Spiegelgrund was one of the "hospitals" used to euthanize unfit and disabled children by the Nazi regime. The way the book is written in multiple voices makes it even more haunting.

[Edwin]

Misschien is het een mooi boek, ik zou het niet weten. Ik kreeg het als audio-boek, en sorry, de verteller(s) maakten dat ik het al na een paar minuten aan de kant gooide.

Ooit hoop ik een nieuwe poging te wagen, maar dan als e-boek of papieren boek.

[micusiowo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fabularyzowana, gęsta jak błoto opowieść o eutanazji dzieci w Wiedniu w czasach nazizmu.
Przez to się brnie ale nie da się od tego uciec.

[Nina Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sehr schwere Kost, aber brilliant umgesetzt.

[Karen Kozich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get through this book.

[Zuzana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Já vůbec nevím, jak hodnotit.
Téma dobré, ještě jsem to v beletrii nepotkala.
Autor schopný.
Jen jsem se asi nějak nesžila s pro mě naprosto chaotickou linkou, kdy jsem dost dlouho tápala v tom různém skákání z místa na místo, z člověka na člověka. Nakonec jsem se rozhodla, že o tom nebudu příliš přemýšlet a budu číst dál a dál, což fungovalo. Ale byl to asi důvod, proč jsem se ne úplně začetla.
A především: Tohle fakt není knížka pro čerstvě těhotné. Fakt ne.

[The Jewish Book Council]

"Steve Sem-Sandberg turns his fearless gaze on a lesser-known evil, the origins of genocide in the Aktion T4 Nazi euthanasia program in Austria." Review by Ranen Omer-Sherman for the Jewish Book Council.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kolejny epizod z historii II Wojny Światowej pokazują okrucieństwo nazistów. Książka pokazuje część akcji T4 czyli usuwania ludzi niepełnosprawnych, chorych psychicznie i innych uznanych przez III Rzeszę za życie niewarte życia.

[Viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

En bra bok som ger perspektiv på vad en totalitär stat gör med sina invånare. För att gilla den här boken måste du ha ganska hård hud eller gott om näsdukar.

[Karbowianka · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://lolantaczyta.wordpress.com/20...

[Karen Brush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just didn't hold my interest enough to finish it.

[Alyssia Cooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter covered by this novel is harrowing but the prose itself is bland and formulaic with no heart or soul behind it to catch you and draw you in. In fact, I would potentially go so far as to say that the only reason this novel has gained so many five star reviews is because of the content and because nobody wants to negatively rate a book about the forced euthanasia of so many children during Nazi times. But for all of the horrendous acts that are described; children dying due to procedures, being put down with medicines, guts hanging out of backsides and even the process of disembowelling oneself… this is somehow, bland and boring.

At no point do you gain any real attachment for the main characters, even though the tale is virtually told through two of them; a nurse and a boy in the same institution. I don’t think I ever really felt sorrow or pity despite knowing that what had happened was horrendously wrong. This book just didn’t draw me into these characters lives and force me to care about them. In fact, many times I would forget characters names entirely and be surprised when they were brought up later as I had somehow just assumed they were dead already. The naming conventions for staff and children kept changing as well, with them sometimes being referred to by first names, sometimes second names and because the names are not English this made it much harder to keep track of what was going on. With other characters there is no conclusion to the novel, no closure and threads are just left hanging in the wind.

The novels scope is also too broad, going from childhood to adulthood, to the pinnacle of these doctors careers to their deaths and trials. It just seemed to meander along and never pick up enough pace to be interesting. If anything the most interesting sections are the trial bits and these are right at the end and such a tiny fraction of the book that it’s almost as if they aren’t important. Instead you are bored to tears with the various tales of where Adrian goes after being moved from the institution as unreformable and it’s all as bleakly depressing and yet mind-numbingly boring as the rest of it… there’s no emotion or pull throughout… it is all just very bland, he did this, she did that.

This may be perhaps due to the translation. Perhaps it works better in its native language. Of that I cannot say. It is after all written with a clearly skilled hand, even if the style was certainly not to my taste. What I can say is that I found this dry, dreary and dull in spite of the fact that the content itself should have been horrifying. I found myself skipping paragraphs or even pages because I’d completely lost interest in it before picking up something vaguely eye catching for a while before once more becoming bored and fast reading again…

[Chiara Ropolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://lalettricesullenuvole.blogspo...

Leggo soprattutto per evadere dal quotidiano, quindi spesso i titoli che vi propongo sono leggeri. Nel giorno della memoria però mi pare doveroso uscire dalla mia confort-zone e parlarvi di questo libro.

Tutti noi sappiamo molte cose riguardo all'olocausto. Sono convinta che non sia mai abbastanza, ma libri e film possono aiutarci. Il nazismo però non ha solo preso di mira gli ebrei, ma ha sistematicamente cercato di eliminare ogni imperfezione alla razza ariana, che sia data da zingari o da persone con problemi fisici e mentali. Questo argomento, purtroppo, è molto meno conosciuto e trattato, così quando ho letto la trama de I prescelti mi è sembrato giusto leggerlo, per saperne di più. Credo che lo scopo del giorno della memoria sia proprio questo.

Il libro racconta di quanto accaduto a Spiegelgrund, l'ospedale di Vienna predisposto a curare i bambini con difficoltà. In realtà in quel posto veniva fatto di tutto, tranne pensare al benessere dei suoi occupanti.
L'atrocità di quanto accaduto mi ha colpita molto, è stato proprio un pugno nello stomaco. Ero a conoscenza di qualcosa ma leggere nero su bianco e in modo dettagliato ciò che è accaduto mi ha turbata, tanto. Tutti i bambini sono indifesi, quelli con difficoltà ancora di più. Per un ideale di purezza si è provveduto all'eutanasia sistematica, dopo averne studiato ogni aspetto.
Oltre a essere inorridita per queste pratiche, sono stata ulteriormente turbata dall'assenza di ogni emozione da parte dei medici e di alcune infermiere. Le piccole vittime sono state pezzi di carne da studiare, da analizzare e infine da eliminare. Il tutto per un ideale di razza pura.

Ciò che è accaduto a Spiegelgrund, così come in altri posti, poi non ha avuto riconoscenza né vendetta. Manca la giustizia per quelle vittime, in quanto le testimonianze non sono state credute e reperirle è stato difficoltoso. C'è veramente da riflettere su questo, ci si sente impotenti.

L'argomento trattato dal libro quindi mi ha molto colpita e coinvolta. Purtroppo però la forma in cui è scritto ha notevolmente frenato il mio entusiasmo.
... continua sul blog

[Felix · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll be honest. I'm not sure how I felt about this book. I mean, obviously, if I'm rating the book on moral worthiness of the subject or how much the story of Am Spiegelgrund needs to be told, then it's 1000/5 stars. But as a reading experience... I just didn't enjoy it.

For one, I got MAJOR book burnout halfway through. The topic is heavy, and there's no moments of levity anywhere. It was tough for me to slog through pages and pages of kids with severe developmental problems being abused by the nurses.

It almost didn't seem to go anywhere? I felt that there were a lot of times when there were descriptions of the behaviours of the kids in the wards just because. Or nights on the wards just because it filled the time. Which got very dull.

The bit I found the easiest to read was the liberation by the Russians and the trial, because I could sense the comeuppance coming. But - and as heinous as it sounds - I just didn't care about the main characters. Adrian didn't draw me in. He just had a tough life all the way through, and although I'm not saying that that doesn't always produce a great hero (Heathcliff, Jane Eyre, etc beg to differ!), I just got to the point where I was going 'Oh, and he's in jail again. And he's lost his job again. And he's back in jail.' Even the twist where Gross is his psychiatrist after his last jail stint didn't make me care about him, or what would happen to him. Sorry. And Anna Katschenka I only cared about enough to be happy that she was accused and tried as an accomplice to murder, WHICH SHE WAS.

And lastly, I'm not a fan of the style. 1. I couldn't understand why the book was separated into sections almost like chapters, and yet the start of every new 'scene' was given a bolded, same-line 'title' of its own within those chapters? What was that about? and 2. Steve Sem-Sandberg's style is a bit like Stephen King's, whom I find impossible to read because it just sticks and seems to go so slowly for me and I can't stand it, so I probably didn't like it for that reason. But hey, that doesn't stop Stephen King from being probably the 2nd most well known author on the planet ever. So.

[TheCosyDragon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon . Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.

The Nazi-run “Spiegelgrund clinic was apparently well-intentioned: both a reform school for lost, wayward boys and girls, and a clinic for chronically ill or malformed children.” Instead, this novel exposes the truth of what happened behind those walls – children tortured and left to cry before being allowed to get sick and medicated to death.

I picked up this novel several times. I really wanted to love it, I thought that the content was fascinating when I read the blurb. However, the execution completely floored me. rare sporadic speech was interspersed throughout text with little to no paragraphing.

One of the things that seriously confused me was the constant transitions between different forms of names. I could cope with the Viennese names, but I couldn’t cope with the crazy swapping between nicknames, last names and first names. Or no name at all, and just a description of their physical or mental state at the time (which was unreliable anyway).

This novel had so much potential because I was very interested in the subject matter. I wanted to love it, which is why I let it percolate on its shelf for 2 years and why it survived two novel cleanouts. I’m now going to release it on Book Crossing, even my mom wasn’t attracted to reading it.

This novel had the positive potential of Max but instead ended up in my could-not-complete pile with I am Sasha. 1 star from me. I couldn’t finish it. Occasionally I can tolerate this kind of abstract writing but I just couldn’t.

[TheCosyDragon · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Nazi-run "Spiegelgrund clinic was apparently well-intentioned: both a reform school for lost, wayward boys and girls, and a clinic for chronically ill or malformed children." Instead, this novel exposes the truth of what happened behind those walls - children tortured and left to cry before being allowed to get sick and medicated to death.

I picked up this novel several times. I really wanted to love it, I thought that the content was fascinating when I read the blurb. However, the execution completely floored me.  rare sporadic speech was interspersed throughout text with little to no paragraphing.

One of the things that seriously confused me was the constant transitions between different forms of names. I could cope with the Viennese names, but I couldn't cope with the crazy swapping between nicknames, last names and first names. Or no name at all, and just a description of their physical or mental state at the time (which was unreliable anyway).

This novel had so much potential because I was very interested in the subject matter. I wanted to love it, which is why I let it percolate on its shelf for 2 years and why it survived two novel cleanouts. I'm now going to release it on Book Crossing, even my mom wasn't attracted to reading it.

This novel had the positive potential of Max but instead ended up in my could-not-complete pile with I am Sasha. 1 star from me. I couldn't finish it. Occasionally I can tolerate this kind of abstract writing but I just couldn't.

[Garryvivianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This extremely long book, is set in Austria during the 2nd world war. When I first started this book, I thought I would quit reading it, it is a rather dark time in history, in the characters' lives, but I continued reading when more people were described, their thoughts, their pitiful little lives.

At this point, the Nazi's were into their program of forced euthanasia of ill and tormented, deformed children. This is a hard read, everything is so hopeless for these children. The story focuses on one, Adrian Ziegler. He and his young companions that are doomed to this life are somewhat always waiting for a better life, their families, mothers, fathers, siblings to come and take them back. These were the children that had medical problems, deformed, were hard to handle, families had no money for other people to watch. They did not know what was happening to their children in this evil place. Then they could not even get into see their children or take them back home.

Story also is centered on one of the nurses that worked there, Anna Katschenka. She is there to work, she somewhat knows things are wrong, but she is there to do the right thing for her employers. Seems like at this time in history, there were always people willing to "do the right thing", yet knowing something is bad. I would guess that living under Nazi rule made people conform to participate in these's evil deeds.

Amazingly, Adrian Ziegler's story is told well into his later years. But this episode in his life always remains in his mind, how can one ever forget this terrible part of your life? I will never forget Adrian Ziegler.