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The Healing Wound: Experiences & Reflections, Germany 1938-2001
In this memoir spanning more than fifty years, Gitta Sereny confronts Germany's troubled past, investigating the dark moments in the country's history as well as chronicling how her life has been repeatedly linked with that nation's history.
Sereny first encountered the Nazis in 1934, at the age of eleven, when by chance she was taken to a Nuremberg rally, and again four years later when she was in Vienna during the Anschluss. In 1940, she was studying in Paris when the Blitzkrieg overran the Allied army; she became a nurse in a chateau on the Loire in occupied France, looking after abandoned children, until 1942 when, warned that she was about to be arrested, she escaped across the Pyrenees. After the war she worked in Displaced Persons camps for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in occupied Germany.
When Sereny became a writer, the Nazi period and its lasting impact on Germany not surprisingly became one of her main themes. The Healing Wound gathers together the best of Sereny's writings about Germany over fifty years, exploring the guilt, denials, and deceptions that, in many different ways, the Nazis created. She writes about individuals, many of whom she came to know well, who were deeply involved in the events of the period - among others, Franz Stangl, the Commandant of Treblinka, John Demjanjuk, the alleged Ivan the Terrible, Leni Riefenstahl, Francois Genoud, a Swiss man who loved Hitler, and of course Albert Speer.
Sereny first encountered the Nazis in 1934, at the age of eleven, when by chance she was taken to a Nuremberg rally, and again four years later when she was in Vienna during the Anschluss. In 1940, she was studying in Paris when the Blitzkrieg overran the Allied army; she became a nurse in a chateau on the Loire in occupied France, looking after abandoned children, until 1942 when, warned that she was about to be arrested, she escaped across the Pyrenees. After the war she worked in Displaced Persons camps for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in occupied Germany.
When Sereny became a writer, the Nazi period and its lasting impact on Germany not surprisingly became one of her main themes. The Healing Wound gathers together the best of Sereny's writings about Germany over fifty years, exploring the guilt, denials, and deceptions that, in many different ways, the Nazis created. She writes about individuals, many of whom she came to know well, who were deeply involved in the events of the period - among others, Franz Stangl, the Commandant of Treblinka, John Demjanjuk, the alleged Ivan the Terrible, Leni Riefenstahl, Francois Genoud, a Swiss man who loved Hitler, and of course Albert Speer.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Gitta Sereny
20 books148 followersGitta Sereny was an Austrian born journalist, biographer and historian. She passed away in England aged 91, following a long illness.
Gitta attributed her fascination with evil to her own experiences of Nazism as a child of central Europe in the early 20th century. Hers was not a happy childhood. She was born in Vienna, the daughter of a beautiful Austrian actress, whom she later described as "without moral opinions", and a wealthy Hungarian landowner. Her father, Gyula, died when she was a child; her elder brother left home at 18 and disappeared from her life; Gitta herself was sent to Stonar House boarding school in Sandwich, Kent, an experience she remembered with some affection.
In 1934, while changing trains in Nuremberg on a journey home from school, she witnessed the Nuremberg Rally and was profoundly moved by the beauty of the spectacle, joining in the crowd's ecstatic cheering. These favourable impressions of the Nazis survived both a reading of Mein Kampf and the 1938 Anschluss, when Hitler annexed a quiescent Austria. The grim realities of Nazism, however, soon began to affect her life in Vienna where she was, by then, a drama student.
She later described seeing a Jewish doctor she knew well being forced to clean pavements with a toothbrush; the terror became more personal after her mother, Margit, with whom Gitta had a poor relationship, became engaged to Ludwig von Mises, the Jewish economist. Von Mises had left Austria for Switzerland, but a German friend tipped Margit off that the authorities planned to arrest her to oblige him to return. Margit promptly fled to Switzerland with her daughter.
In Switzerland, Gitta was sent to a finishing school. Never accommodating to her mother's plans, she promptly absconded, first to London then to Paris. Margit and von Mises moved to the US. Gitta, eventually, was also obliged to flee, first across the Pyrenees to Spain, then to the US.
She returned to Paris four months after the war ended, to join the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, working with orphans in a ravaged Europe. The framework of what was to be her life's work – the exploration of childhood trauma and the nature of evil – was in place. It was in postwar Paris, in 1948, that she met and married the photographer Don Honeyman, with whom she was to have a son and a daughter. Don, who died last year, was to prove a good humoured and profoundly supportive companion who accompanied Gitta through the long and painstaking research that became a hallmark of her work.
She also reported on the trials in Germany of Third Reich functionaries, including concentration camp staff, such as Franz Stangl, the former commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka. . Her book on Stangl, Into That Darkness (1974), remains one of the best books on the Third Reich and established Gitta's reputation as an authority on the history of the period.
Furthermore, her book ‘Albert Speer, His Battle With Truth’ (1995), later dramatised by David Edgar at the National Theatre, repeatedly challenges Speer's contention that he too was ignorant of the fate of the Jews under the regime he had served so faithfully.
Gitta was frequently embattled, but rarely daunted. She fought a 20-year battle with the historian David Irving and was often targeted with fascist hate mail. Despite the grim nature of her subjects, Gitta was a warm and generous friend with a ready sense of humour, and she and Honeyman entertained frequently at their home in Chelsea, London. Despite her relentless psychological exploration of her subjects, she resisted all invitations to write her own autobiography, but in her late 70s she published a partial memoir in The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2001 (2001). She was appointed honorary CBE in 2003, for services to journalism.
Gitta attributed her fascination with evil to her own experiences of Nazism as a child of central Europe in the early 20th century. Hers was not a happy childhood. She was born in Vienna, the daughter of a beautiful Austrian actress, whom she later described as "without moral opinions", and a wealthy Hungarian landowner. Her father, Gyula, died when she was a child; her elder brother left home at 18 and disappeared from her life; Gitta herself was sent to Stonar House boarding school in Sandwich, Kent, an experience she remembered with some affection.
In 1934, while changing trains in Nuremberg on a journey home from school, she witnessed the Nuremberg Rally and was profoundly moved by the beauty of the spectacle, joining in the crowd's ecstatic cheering. These favourable impressions of the Nazis survived both a reading of Mein Kampf and the 1938 Anschluss, when Hitler annexed a quiescent Austria. The grim realities of Nazism, however, soon began to affect her life in Vienna where she was, by then, a drama student.
She later described seeing a Jewish doctor she knew well being forced to clean pavements with a toothbrush; the terror became more personal after her mother, Margit, with whom Gitta had a poor relationship, became engaged to Ludwig von Mises, the Jewish economist. Von Mises had left Austria for Switzerland, but a German friend tipped Margit off that the authorities planned to arrest her to oblige him to return. Margit promptly fled to Switzerland with her daughter.
In Switzerland, Gitta was sent to a finishing school. Never accommodating to her mother's plans, she promptly absconded, first to London then to Paris. Margit and von Mises moved to the US. Gitta, eventually, was also obliged to flee, first across the Pyrenees to Spain, then to the US.
She returned to Paris four months after the war ended, to join the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, working with orphans in a ravaged Europe. The framework of what was to be her life's work – the exploration of childhood trauma and the nature of evil – was in place. It was in postwar Paris, in 1948, that she met and married the photographer Don Honeyman, with whom she was to have a son and a daughter. Don, who died last year, was to prove a good humoured and profoundly supportive companion who accompanied Gitta through the long and painstaking research that became a hallmark of her work.
She also reported on the trials in Germany of Third Reich functionaries, including concentration camp staff, such as Franz Stangl, the former commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka. . Her book on Stangl, Into That Darkness (1974), remains one of the best books on the Third Reich and established Gitta's reputation as an authority on the history of the period.
Furthermore, her book ‘Albert Speer, His Battle With Truth’ (1995), later dramatised by David Edgar at the National Theatre, repeatedly challenges Speer's contention that he too was ignorant of the fate of the Jews under the regime he had served so faithfully.
Gitta was frequently embattled, but rarely daunted. She fought a 20-year battle with the historian David Irving and was often targeted with fascist hate mail. Despite the grim nature of her subjects, Gitta was a warm and generous friend with a ready sense of humour, and she and Honeyman entertained frequently at their home in Chelsea, London. Despite her relentless psychological exploration of her subjects, she resisted all invitations to write her own autobiography, but in her late 70s she published a partial memoir in The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2001 (2001). She was appointed honorary CBE in 2003, for services to journalism.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 15, 2024
Just about as good a book I've read on Germany's Nazi past. Gitta Sereny is simply a brilliant writer, who really gets under the surface of a country and its people during and after the Second-World-War. Sereny, who had Hungarian parents and was brought up in Vienna, had been a volunteer in the refugee camps of Occupied France, and clearly the war left such a huge mark on her, and as she became increasingly fascinated by the nature of evil, she took to writing. She is here absorbed in a search for what it is that leads human beings so often and so readily to embrace violence and cruelty. She thereby embarked on a lifetime's work on Germany and the moral degeneracy of the Nazis. Contrary to popular belief, she has always insisted that the Germans born in the 1930s continued to be consumed by guilt, brought about by the fact that parents and teachers were defensively silent on the past. At the heart of This book are seven profiles of figures important in the Nazi years, with the section on Albert Speer I found to be one of the most fascinating. Sereny asks us to grasp, to honour, the extent of German attempts to come to honest terms with the hideous past. West German democracy has laboured to instruct the young as to the facts; it put many of the murderers and torturers on trial, and has built museums and memorials to its victims.
The most moving and chilling part is that which deals with the slaughter and deportation of children, notably in and from Poland. Sereny was personally involved with UN efforts to find, identify and repatriate children abducted by the Nazis. Should these wretched victims be sent back to a culture, to communities that had become alien to them? 'Historically, no Jewish child is known to have survived the four specific extermination camps of Chelmno, Belsec, Sobibor and Treblinka.' This is one of a number of sentences that becomes almost too unbearable to read.
There is so much to cover here, that no review can really do this book justice, and even if Sereny's work ultimately fails to pin down the ever elusive nature of evil (which is probably impossible anyway), she has gone much further down the line than most other contemporary writers.
A remarkable read all round.
March 3, 2022
Page 77 (my book) Alfred Spiess
“A people cannot separate themselves from their history. You cannot say yes to Beethoven as part of you, and no to Hitler.”
I have read two other books by Gitta Sereny – “Into That Darkness” (interviews with Franz Stangl the commandant of Treblinka) and “Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth”. Gitta Sereny probes into the darkness of these perpetrators. There are numerous books on victims/survivors, but Gitta Sereny has chosen to explore those responsible for the vicious deeds.
This book is a collection of essays she wrote over the years. She attended war crime trials in West Germany (or more accurately crimes against humanity by German soldiers). She speaks with the children whose parents were active during the war. She gives us stirring portraits of the complexities of German youth during the 1960s and then during the 1990s. There is a harrowing chapter on the children of the leading Nazis like the son of Martin Bormann. She examines how they coped or didn’t – with the legacy of their parents.
Page 303 Chapter on Children of the Reich
Confrontation with the truth has been left to their children
“But they were incapable of shame or repentance and therefore left us alone with nothing but the heritage of their awful guilt.”
There are interviews with Hitler’s favourite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Speer, Kurt Waldheim, Franz Stangl of Treblinka, and a short interview with Traudl Junge (Hitler’s secretary who was with him in the last days in the bunker).
Page 81
“The day will never come” Dr Ruckerl said, “when we can say ‘it’s done now [the trials], it’s finished.’ There is no end to it except a biological one, when at last they will all be dead.”
Page 120 Franz Stangl
“the only way I could live was to compartmentalize my thinking.”
Some of the articles like that on the fake Hitler diaries I found overly long. The same for the John Demjanjuk article – and his odyssey was not finished when this was written.
Gitta Sereny attempts to penetrate the several walls that these perpetrators and collaborators have surrounded themselves with over the years. Their lies and untruths become self-perpetuating – often to protect themselves and their loved ones.
She also exposes the Holocaust deniers – and emphasizes that in addition to Jews – millions of Poles, Slavs, Russians, Romany and many others were killed or deliberately starved to death by the Nazis. Above all Hitler’s war was a racist war whose main purpose was to have the Germanic people rule and subjugate all others.
Page 141
Anyone who has actually worked in the archives is familiar with the hundreds of railway signals which survive, describing with horrible monotony the destination and contents of the trains to Sobibor and Treblinka… all researches are only too familiar with the countless documents “orders, invoices, plans”, and indeed blueprints concerning the construction of gas chambers.
Page 253 Kurt Waldheim
“I could have resisted, deserted, and I didn’t.”
That was what he said now, but did he ever actually consider such a choice?
“A people cannot separate themselves from their history. You cannot say yes to Beethoven as part of you, and no to Hitler.”
I have read two other books by Gitta Sereny – “Into That Darkness” (interviews with Franz Stangl the commandant of Treblinka) and “Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth”. Gitta Sereny probes into the darkness of these perpetrators. There are numerous books on victims/survivors, but Gitta Sereny has chosen to explore those responsible for the vicious deeds.
This book is a collection of essays she wrote over the years. She attended war crime trials in West Germany (or more accurately crimes against humanity by German soldiers). She speaks with the children whose parents were active during the war. She gives us stirring portraits of the complexities of German youth during the 1960s and then during the 1990s. There is a harrowing chapter on the children of the leading Nazis like the son of Martin Bormann. She examines how they coped or didn’t – with the legacy of their parents.
Page 303 Chapter on Children of the Reich
Confrontation with the truth has been left to their children
“But they were incapable of shame or repentance and therefore left us alone with nothing but the heritage of their awful guilt.”
There are interviews with Hitler’s favourite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Speer, Kurt Waldheim, Franz Stangl of Treblinka, and a short interview with Traudl Junge (Hitler’s secretary who was with him in the last days in the bunker).
Page 81
“The day will never come” Dr Ruckerl said, “when we can say ‘it’s done now [the trials], it’s finished.’ There is no end to it except a biological one, when at last they will all be dead.”
Page 120 Franz Stangl
“the only way I could live was to compartmentalize my thinking.”
Some of the articles like that on the fake Hitler diaries I found overly long. The same for the John Demjanjuk article – and his odyssey was not finished when this was written.
Gitta Sereny attempts to penetrate the several walls that these perpetrators and collaborators have surrounded themselves with over the years. Their lies and untruths become self-perpetuating – often to protect themselves and their loved ones.
She also exposes the Holocaust deniers – and emphasizes that in addition to Jews – millions of Poles, Slavs, Russians, Romany and many others were killed or deliberately starved to death by the Nazis. Above all Hitler’s war was a racist war whose main purpose was to have the Germanic people rule and subjugate all others.
Page 141
Anyone who has actually worked in the archives is familiar with the hundreds of railway signals which survive, describing with horrible monotony the destination and contents of the trains to Sobibor and Treblinka… all researches are only too familiar with the countless documents “orders, invoices, plans”, and indeed blueprints concerning the construction of gas chambers.
Page 253 Kurt Waldheim
“I could have resisted, deserted, and I didn’t.”
That was what he said now, but did he ever actually consider such a choice?
March 15, 2014
Really interesting book of Gitta Sereny's journalism. Some of the things she felt very strongly about:
1. the distinction between concentration camps and the extermination camps. The KZ (concentration camps) were appalling enough, and millions died of exposure, brutality, punishment, disease, starvation, etc., but they were primarily forced labour and penal camps. The camps in eastern Poland - Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka - existed for one purpose only: to murder Jews, gypsies, Poles, communists, anti-fascists, etc.. in the gas chambers.
2. in the years following the war Gitta Sereny became increasingly aware that young people in Germany and Austria (and adults, usually foreigners) were somehow conflating the war with the Holocaust, and specifically the murder of six million Jews. “Why bring all that up again? We know the Jews suffered but it was wartime.” She found it incredible that teachers weren't stressing that the persecution of people according to race, religion and health was part and parcel of Nazi ideology and had begun long before the war began: the war simply provided the circumstances for experimenting with different methods of “liquidating” or exterminating the hated peoples.
3. Gitta Sereny returned to Germany in 1945 as part of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation). She was sent to the huge DP camp in Regensburg where she dealt with “unaccompanied children”. These were not orphans: these children had been kidnapped, between the ages of three and fourteen, by the SS from Poland, the Ukraine, and the Baltic states because of their “Aryan” appearance and therefore “good” German families would be able to adopt them. Adults in Regensburg had to return to their countries of origin (even though everyone knew that being sent back into the Russian-controlled zones meant either execution or being sent to a gulag) but UNRRA was unwilling to send the children back. Gitta Sereny had very mixed feelings about this policy: didn't heartbroken and desperate parents in Poland and the Ukraine have as much right to their children as anyone else? The fact that almost all the children she met seemed to have been placed with loving German families didn't help matters. In such an awful situation how can anyone know what is in the best interests of the child? Sereny left UNRRA in 1946.
1. the distinction between concentration camps and the extermination camps. The KZ (concentration camps) were appalling enough, and millions died of exposure, brutality, punishment, disease, starvation, etc., but they were primarily forced labour and penal camps. The camps in eastern Poland - Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka - existed for one purpose only: to murder Jews, gypsies, Poles, communists, anti-fascists, etc.. in the gas chambers.
2. in the years following the war Gitta Sereny became increasingly aware that young people in Germany and Austria (and adults, usually foreigners) were somehow conflating the war with the Holocaust, and specifically the murder of six million Jews. “Why bring all that up again? We know the Jews suffered but it was wartime.” She found it incredible that teachers weren't stressing that the persecution of people according to race, religion and health was part and parcel of Nazi ideology and had begun long before the war began: the war simply provided the circumstances for experimenting with different methods of “liquidating” or exterminating the hated peoples.
3. Gitta Sereny returned to Germany in 1945 as part of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation). She was sent to the huge DP camp in Regensburg where she dealt with “unaccompanied children”. These were not orphans: these children had been kidnapped, between the ages of three and fourteen, by the SS from Poland, the Ukraine, and the Baltic states because of their “Aryan” appearance and therefore “good” German families would be able to adopt them. Adults in Regensburg had to return to their countries of origin (even though everyone knew that being sent back into the Russian-controlled zones meant either execution or being sent to a gulag) but UNRRA was unwilling to send the children back. Gitta Sereny had very mixed feelings about this policy: didn't heartbroken and desperate parents in Poland and the Ukraine have as much right to their children as anyone else? The fact that almost all the children she met seemed to have been placed with loving German families didn't help matters. In such an awful situation how can anyone know what is in the best interests of the child? Sereny left UNRRA in 1946.
October 17, 2017
Gitta Sereny has been writing about the Third Reich and The Holocaust ever since the War. As a young volunteer nurse in France in World War II, she was nearly arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities; ironically, given her hatred for Germany and Germans, she was tipped off about her impending arrest by a German Officer, and successfully made it to the USA via Spain.
After the war she returned to Europe, working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which was engaged in the melancholy duty of trying to repatriate children to their birth parents where possible (especially children "stolen" by the Nazis and given to Aryan parents). This experience, and the loss of her homeland and childhood to Nazism, has led to a life-long quest to try and find meaning and answers from participants in the most horrendous crimes committed in Europe during the War.
The German trauma is a collection of many of the articles written by Sereny over the years on the German response to their history. Most of the articles have been re-written for inclusion in this book, and are headed by reflections and responses by Sereny. She begins with a little of her own history, her work with UNRRA, and the responses of Germans to her when she was representing the "victors". She moves from that experience to the youth of Germany in the post-war period, who were caught between their parent's generation, who were trying to forget or block out the past, and the truth of history and their place in it. One article discusses the work of the German prosecutors who worked on the trials that took place in Germany for decades, trying servants of the Nazis. These committed men and women, many driven beyond their capacity to cope, are some of the few Germans who clear-headedly faced up to the nations crimes. These trials were always extremely well reported by the German press, and even attended by schoolchildren as part of their education. However, as Sereny notes, the reaction of many Germans was to switch off, unable to face such horrible facts (a thing that happens in many countries with nasty episodes in their past).
One of the biggest trials held under this process was of Franz Stangl, who was Commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, and for a time, of Sobibor. Sereny spent several months talking with Stangl after he began serving his life sentence. As with her major work Albert Speer : his battle with the truth, Sereny is interested mainly in how Stangl lived with the knowledge of what he'd done. Unlike some of the other Nazis involved in the extermination camps, Stangl was an intelligent and thoughtful man. His justifications under the relentless blowtorch of Sereny's questions is painful to read, and his partial realisation of his guilt preceeded his death by heart attack by nineteen hours. In fact many of the people Sereny talks to over the years point out that one could not live with the idea that such horrors occurred, let alone having a direct part in them, which is perhaps one of the more compelling reasons perpetrators go to such lengths to avoid taking responsibility. Her piece on the trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, being a case in point. Demjanjuk preferred to be sentenced to hang than admit he was a guard at one of the other camps (Sobibor), which would have seen him acquitted from the charges laid against him. Of course to admit that would have given the lie to his entire life since the war, as a well-loved father and husband and pillar of his local church. Eventually, the truth saved his life, while at the same time destroying it.
The apologists for the Nazis also appear in these pages, and get short shrift from Sereny. From people who are merely treasure-hunters, to those with more sinister motives; her articles about the Hitler Diaries hoax and the life and death of Odilo Globocnik (head of Aktion Reinhard, the creation and use of extermination camps which killed over 2 million Jews in 1942-43) revealing how deep the threads of Neo-Nazim still run in our society.
The book ends, however, on an optimistic note, pointing out that the Young Germans of today (2000, when the book was written), seem to be more interested than ever in discovering and talking about the past, and are not weighed down by some of the taboos of previous generations. Ironically, given the books release not long before 9/11, Sereny's final message is a plea against racism and xenophobia, and the "categorization" of peoples and races. Something humankind still has to learn.
The German trauma is well worth a read - you will learn something, and as always with Gitta Sereny, you will be reading well-shaped prose. Try and find it at your local library.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
After the war she returned to Europe, working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which was engaged in the melancholy duty of trying to repatriate children to their birth parents where possible (especially children "stolen" by the Nazis and given to Aryan parents). This experience, and the loss of her homeland and childhood to Nazism, has led to a life-long quest to try and find meaning and answers from participants in the most horrendous crimes committed in Europe during the War.
The German trauma is a collection of many of the articles written by Sereny over the years on the German response to their history. Most of the articles have been re-written for inclusion in this book, and are headed by reflections and responses by Sereny. She begins with a little of her own history, her work with UNRRA, and the responses of Germans to her when she was representing the "victors". She moves from that experience to the youth of Germany in the post-war period, who were caught between their parent's generation, who were trying to forget or block out the past, and the truth of history and their place in it. One article discusses the work of the German prosecutors who worked on the trials that took place in Germany for decades, trying servants of the Nazis. These committed men and women, many driven beyond their capacity to cope, are some of the few Germans who clear-headedly faced up to the nations crimes. These trials were always extremely well reported by the German press, and even attended by schoolchildren as part of their education. However, as Sereny notes, the reaction of many Germans was to switch off, unable to face such horrible facts (a thing that happens in many countries with nasty episodes in their past).
One of the biggest trials held under this process was of Franz Stangl, who was Commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, and for a time, of Sobibor. Sereny spent several months talking with Stangl after he began serving his life sentence. As with her major work Albert Speer : his battle with the truth, Sereny is interested mainly in how Stangl lived with the knowledge of what he'd done. Unlike some of the other Nazis involved in the extermination camps, Stangl was an intelligent and thoughtful man. His justifications under the relentless blowtorch of Sereny's questions is painful to read, and his partial realisation of his guilt preceeded his death by heart attack by nineteen hours. In fact many of the people Sereny talks to over the years point out that one could not live with the idea that such horrors occurred, let alone having a direct part in them, which is perhaps one of the more compelling reasons perpetrators go to such lengths to avoid taking responsibility. Her piece on the trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, being a case in point. Demjanjuk preferred to be sentenced to hang than admit he was a guard at one of the other camps (Sobibor), which would have seen him acquitted from the charges laid against him. Of course to admit that would have given the lie to his entire life since the war, as a well-loved father and husband and pillar of his local church. Eventually, the truth saved his life, while at the same time destroying it.
The apologists for the Nazis also appear in these pages, and get short shrift from Sereny. From people who are merely treasure-hunters, to those with more sinister motives; her articles about the Hitler Diaries hoax and the life and death of Odilo Globocnik (head of Aktion Reinhard, the creation and use of extermination camps which killed over 2 million Jews in 1942-43) revealing how deep the threads of Neo-Nazim still run in our society.
The book ends, however, on an optimistic note, pointing out that the Young Germans of today (2000, when the book was written), seem to be more interested than ever in discovering and talking about the past, and are not weighed down by some of the taboos of previous generations. Ironically, given the books release not long before 9/11, Sereny's final message is a plea against racism and xenophobia, and the "categorization" of peoples and races. Something humankind still has to learn.
The German trauma is well worth a read - you will learn something, and as always with Gitta Sereny, you will be reading well-shaped prose. Try and find it at your local library.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
June 20, 2012
"THE HEALING WOUND" is a memoir that is also a reflection on a Europe that has evolved over the decades from a fractious, war-doomed continent to a vibrant, democratic society.
April 4, 2020
Gitta Sereny's collection of her journalism from the late 1960s to the 1990s gets five stars for just one extended piece - her assessment of Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka, based on interviews she undertook in 1971 just before Stangl died of a heart attack in prison.
We will get back to Stangl in a moment but the book has a number of other insightful pieces on characters like Francois Genoud and events such as the farce over the Hitler Diaries and the political confusion surrounding the Demjanjuk case with fresh autobiographical material added to give context.
There also some potboilers in there - interviews that are not much more than self-serving publicity for the interviewees (Speer, Riefenstahl, Syberberg) or pieces that dully explore the neuroses of the German liberal bourgeoisie - but the good investigative pieces outweight the transient gossip.
You can read these texts either as an insight into the cosmopolitan liberal mind trying to build a narrative around national socialism that can be made to fit with the journalistic ethics of detachment or you can read them as 'last chances' to get into the heads of some darkened souls.
Naturally, behind all this is a fact on the ground - one side won and one side lost a brutal war with crimes of horrifying proportions on both sides. The real issue is that the side that lost did something of exceptional horror - industrialising the slaughter of civilians for reasons of ideology.
Many themes emerge that cause us to think about the psychological consequences of this on the losing side and Sereny is a good guide not because of her liberalism (which we may take as a given) but because, with rare lapses, of her commitment to detachment in giving the past its voice.
The Stangl interview (which became the core of a significant book which sits alongside her works on Speer and the child murderess Mary Bell as contributions to the study of 'evil') exemplifies her skill and her honesty. She is also honest when she just can't take more of some ex-Nazi's nonsense.
Personally I am less interested in the guilt trip of neurotics who were not born or were children during the Nazi era. The self-flagellation of the German establishment was more about giving cover to not rocking the boat in rehabilitating former Nazis and sustaining democracy than morality.
What is really interesting is how people who are not obviously psychopathic are drawn into activity that is, in fact, legal under the prevailing regime but which even they recognise go way beyond the bounds of the acceptable under normal circumstances.
To be blunt, we might ask the same question of those who bombed Tokyo or Hamburg or many a modern corporate executive operating in the emerging world but in Stangl we have the extreme case - an ordinary copper (basically) steadily drawn into the business of organising mass murder.
The notion of the banality of evil is not really accepted as it once was - if only because we now know that Eichmann (about whom this was said by Arendt in good faith) was not quite who he appeared to be, or equally as it was convenient to present him, at his trial.
The idea of the banality of evil was useful to a certain class at a certain type of history because it could point the finger at 'them' (the functionaries and 'essential workers' of a regime) and not 'us' (the educated and intelligentsia) who, implied, could never have been implicated in such crimes!
The Stangl interview does show us an ordinary person who - if Sereny is to be believed - was not 'bad' under normal circumstances but who did bad things because he was embedded in a particular system at a particular time under particular circumstances.
And this sense of a particular set of human conditions guiding people into conformity - cemented by regime intellectuals elsewhere - recurs over and over again in the interviews with the constant and fair complaint that critics simply do not understand what it was like to live then.
It is this contingency of our 'goodness' that should strike home and make us think. I look at a liberal intellectual operating on automatic today and I often see someone who, under certain circumstances, could easily have been a racial hygeinist or Boshevik.
What Stangl and his critics often have in common is an inability to think critically on their own account about the contingency of their own situation and so they can be pulled increasingly into justifying the unjustifiable because they share a morality rather than have a private ethic.
In other words, terming what was done as banal is arrogant. We should actually refer to it as the normality of evil, a very different way of seeing things. Any structure that organises itself to survive under perceived existential threat or for existential ambition can and will make evil normal.
Sereny's skill lies in being wholly unforgiving of the act without confusing an act with the totality of a person - a rather catholic way of seeing the world (though Sereny was, in fact, of mixed German-Jewish and Hungarian Protestant background).
The conditionality of evil is what should interest us here and we see the same thing with the case of John Demanjuk who was undoubtedly trapped by history into a position at Sobibor but then proved himself exemplary (if not enormously intelligent) once he was out of that hell.
We often see an absolutist view of good and evil that refuses to recognise this conditionality that places people in positions where good or evil is to be done without thought although one must recognise the existence of some persons who are driven to good or bad acts by their very nature.
Sereny herself towards the end of the book wonders what the point had become by the 1980s of trying older men for things done under very different conditions in their late teenage or early twenties now that the immediate post-war chance for justice had long since gone.
And, though no position is taken, throughout the book there is a more nuanced approach than we often find from liberals to the memorialisation of the past into fixed narratives designed to create some form of impossible justice than is actually a form of revenge.
This is not a book that will easily resolve any moral dilemmas. It is a book simply of (mostly) excellent journalism giving us at least some semblance of the facts on which we can then draw our own moral conclusions.
This is not say that I would be forgiving of such crimes (far from it) but I would be proportionate and demand consistency and fairness within all normalising systems (including our own) rather than see our current tendency for show trials for the purpose of mass cultural engineering.
Stangl should perhaps have been executed rather than imprisoned from that perspective. The politicisation of extreme criminality in the West seems often to have been less just than the brute punishment meted out in the East by Russian war crimes hypocrites but that's another story.
Fundamentally, the morality of the post-war era was a 'fix' at so many levels - designed to ensure Germany remained subservient, to ensure that Nazi Germans could be reintegrated harmlessly, to avoid too many questions being asked about the generality of war crimes and to try and show some compassion and restitution to those most affected or noisiest.
It was about subservience without humiliation, stabilisation and respect for the most powerful of those representing the damaged (I recall no rush to return the German gold reserves to Greece). It was probably all that could be done but it was not quite as just or fair as we would like to think.
From this perspective, Sereny shines a light on many of the dark corners of this process of 'justice' so that rather than being told what is evil by the posturing moralists, we can see it for itself and then make our own judgements on what it is and how it manifests itself.
And this is why the testimony of Stangl is so important because never was cruel mechanised evil so manifest in the production line murder of people whose only 'crime' was not to fit into the alternative world view of a system of desperate ideological loons with a sense of style.
How an ordinary man, more catholic than Nazi by instincts, ends up acting as the central administrator of such a programme of machined death is what should interest us and Sereny's account of that process is plausible and disturbing.
Sereny's skill in this is often to separate person from deeds. This comes across most effectively in her curious and honest account of her family friendship with Francois Genoud, unrepentant Nazi and funder of Arab terrorism, which will worry many readers. It worried me somewhat.
She can say that this person was one of the most decent and honest people she had met - perhaps even a political naif - but also that he never wavered in his ideological position. The two, she suggests, are not incompatible which flies in the face of all contemporary liberal assumptions.
But she is right. Ideological lunacy is only dangerous when associated with the ability to implement it and we come full circle to the problem of evil - not how to deal with evil people but how to ensure we do not permit evil systems. And sometimes we refuse to see the lurking evil in ours.
November 25, 2010
To be honest, I did not read every chapter.
The thing with this book is - it assumes a lot of knowledge about the Second World War. It throws names and important historical moments at you without any introduction. I'm also not entirely sure about the book's point: autobiography? Single fragments? I thought, from the blurb and the title, that it'd be about how Germany dealt with its guilt. Sadly, it was a bit more all over the place. Still, it does have a lot of interesting, shocking and moving information and it's definitely worth a read.
The thing with this book is - it assumes a lot of knowledge about the Second World War. It throws names and important historical moments at you without any introduction. I'm also not entirely sure about the book's point: autobiography? Single fragments? I thought, from the blurb and the title, that it'd be about how Germany dealt with its guilt. Sadly, it was a bit more all over the place. Still, it does have a lot of interesting, shocking and moving information and it's definitely worth a read.
Read
March 9, 2024The most scholarly book I have attempted to read. Often hard going, always heavy going - some of the chapters are absolutely captivating, some are a drudging mix of stats and more text about stats.
October 15, 2021
A vida da autora sempre foi de um modo ou outro assombrado pelo nazismo. Nasceu em Viena, filha de um aristocrata húngaro, em 1923. Viu quando criança as paradas de Nuremberg, a ocupação de Viena, a humilhação dos judeus da cidade e mais tarde, depois de ter saído de casa, trabalhou como enfermeira na França ocupada e teve alguma participação na Resistência. Escapou, antes de ser presa, para a Espanha e depois para os Estados Unidos. Alguns anos depois do fim da guerra se tornou escritora e jornalista investigativa. Acompanhou o tribunal de Nuremberg e encontrou os mais diversos tipos que tinham se envolvido com o nazismo.
Aqui, neste livro, há uma coletânea de ensaios que ela escreveu ao longo da vida e que tinham relação com o nazismo e os nazistas. Como ela disse em algum momento, nunca conseguiu evitar seu envolvimento com as questões sobre o Terceiro Reich e suas consequências. De certa maneira, é também um balanço da sua vida como escritora. Em 2000, ano da publicação do livro, ela tinha 77 anos e de alguma maneira me parece que ela sentiu que era o momento para juntas os muitos fios soltos que foi deixando ao longo do caminho.
Como é uma coletânea, há uma grande variedade de temas, mesmo que todos, de alguma forma girem em torno do nacional-socialismo. Vários tratam de como as gerações alemãs mais jovens lidam com o passado. Bem ou mal, continua a ser uma herança a ser carregada, mesmo que já se tenham passado décadas desde 1945.
Há também o retrato de vários personagens. Há alguns que poderiam ter sido mais bem explorados, caso do único médico absolvido durante o julgamento dos médicos, em Nuremberg. Há figuras que são menores do que parecem. Há, ainda, aqueles personagens que aparecem brevemente e tem uma riqueza sensacional. Fiquei emocionado quando ela – uma colegial – conta quando encontrou seu antigo pediatra, a quem ela tinha em grande consideração – judeu – sendo humilhado pela ruas de Viena, obrigado a lavar calçadas com uma escova de dentes. Algumas linhas depois ela conta que ele morreu em Sobibor, o campo de extermínio, em 1943. Talvez tenha sido o trecho do livro que mais me emocionou.
De qualquer modo, as duas figuras mais exploradas por ela são Franz Stangl e Albert Speer. Para cada um deles, ela escreveu um livro. Speer, um arquiteto bastante conhecido pelas suas altas ligações durante o nazismo. Stangl, menos conhecido, talvez o personagem mais interessante. Ele era um homem comum, um policial austríaco que vai parar – segundo ele – um pouco por acaso no programa de extermínio T4 (de pessoas com deficiência) e depois foi promovido para comandante de Treblinka. Depois de viver por muitos anos no Brasil, foi extraditado para a Alemanha Ocidental. Morreu de infarto pouco depois de ter sido condenado à prisão perpétua. Stangl era o homem comum. Por muitos anos passou como um funcionário comum na Volkswagen de São Bernardo do Campo. Sequer se deu ao trabalho de alterar o nome. Até o consulado austríaco sabia dele no Brasil.
O mais impressionante de Stangl é que ele conta a sua própria história por meio de mais de 70 horas de entrevista que concedeu a Sereny.
É difícil saber o quanto do que ele afirma é verdade. Várias vezes ele foi pego na mentira. Mas faz de si próprio o retrato do homem comum: um policial que acabou por ser enredado por forças maiores do que si próprio. É de se duvidar até que ponto essa imagem que ele fez de si próprio são autênticas. Seria uma mentira consciente para se livrar da culpa? Ou ele estaria tentando lavar a própria imagem?
Algumas coisas que ele disse para ela: “Deus é tudo que há de mais sublime, algo que não consigo entender, mas apenas crer Nele” ou “Portanto, deve haver algo que está além do homem” e, ainda, “Tenho perfeita consciência do que fiz” e, por fim, “Minha culpa é que ainda estou aqui. Essa é a minha culpa”. Como alguém comum – como era o próprio Stangl – se transforma em um monstro? Isso é o que mais assombra o leitor. Acho que a própria Sereny não encontrou a resposta para a pergunta. De qualquer modo, uma leitura muito valiosa para tentar entender como algumas pessoas vão descendo cada vez mais fundo no abismo. E, mais ainda, como é fácil abraçar o abismo. Isso talvez seja o mais terrível da natureza humana.
Aqui, neste livro, há uma coletânea de ensaios que ela escreveu ao longo da vida e que tinham relação com o nazismo e os nazistas. Como ela disse em algum momento, nunca conseguiu evitar seu envolvimento com as questões sobre o Terceiro Reich e suas consequências. De certa maneira, é também um balanço da sua vida como escritora. Em 2000, ano da publicação do livro, ela tinha 77 anos e de alguma maneira me parece que ela sentiu que era o momento para juntas os muitos fios soltos que foi deixando ao longo do caminho.
Como é uma coletânea, há uma grande variedade de temas, mesmo que todos, de alguma forma girem em torno do nacional-socialismo. Vários tratam de como as gerações alemãs mais jovens lidam com o passado. Bem ou mal, continua a ser uma herança a ser carregada, mesmo que já se tenham passado décadas desde 1945.
Há também o retrato de vários personagens. Há alguns que poderiam ter sido mais bem explorados, caso do único médico absolvido durante o julgamento dos médicos, em Nuremberg. Há figuras que são menores do que parecem. Há, ainda, aqueles personagens que aparecem brevemente e tem uma riqueza sensacional. Fiquei emocionado quando ela – uma colegial – conta quando encontrou seu antigo pediatra, a quem ela tinha em grande consideração – judeu – sendo humilhado pela ruas de Viena, obrigado a lavar calçadas com uma escova de dentes. Algumas linhas depois ela conta que ele morreu em Sobibor, o campo de extermínio, em 1943. Talvez tenha sido o trecho do livro que mais me emocionou.
De qualquer modo, as duas figuras mais exploradas por ela são Franz Stangl e Albert Speer. Para cada um deles, ela escreveu um livro. Speer, um arquiteto bastante conhecido pelas suas altas ligações durante o nazismo. Stangl, menos conhecido, talvez o personagem mais interessante. Ele era um homem comum, um policial austríaco que vai parar – segundo ele – um pouco por acaso no programa de extermínio T4 (de pessoas com deficiência) e depois foi promovido para comandante de Treblinka. Depois de viver por muitos anos no Brasil, foi extraditado para a Alemanha Ocidental. Morreu de infarto pouco depois de ter sido condenado à prisão perpétua. Stangl era o homem comum. Por muitos anos passou como um funcionário comum na Volkswagen de São Bernardo do Campo. Sequer se deu ao trabalho de alterar o nome. Até o consulado austríaco sabia dele no Brasil.
O mais impressionante de Stangl é que ele conta a sua própria história por meio de mais de 70 horas de entrevista que concedeu a Sereny.
É difícil saber o quanto do que ele afirma é verdade. Várias vezes ele foi pego na mentira. Mas faz de si próprio o retrato do homem comum: um policial que acabou por ser enredado por forças maiores do que si próprio. É de se duvidar até que ponto essa imagem que ele fez de si próprio são autênticas. Seria uma mentira consciente para se livrar da culpa? Ou ele estaria tentando lavar a própria imagem?
Algumas coisas que ele disse para ela: “Deus é tudo que há de mais sublime, algo que não consigo entender, mas apenas crer Nele” ou “Portanto, deve haver algo que está além do homem” e, ainda, “Tenho perfeita consciência do que fiz” e, por fim, “Minha culpa é que ainda estou aqui. Essa é a minha culpa”. Como alguém comum – como era o próprio Stangl – se transforma em um monstro? Isso é o que mais assombra o leitor. Acho que a própria Sereny não encontrou a resposta para a pergunta. De qualquer modo, uma leitura muito valiosa para tentar entender como algumas pessoas vão descendo cada vez mais fundo no abismo. E, mais ainda, como é fácil abraçar o abismo. Isso talvez seja o mais terrível da natureza humana.
November 24, 2025
Gitta Sereny framstår, 13 år efter sin död, som en oumbärlig författare och journalist. Hennes böcker om Frantz Stangl, lägerkommendanten vid dödslägret Trevlinka och Albert Speer, arkitekt, rustningsminister och nära förtrogen till Hitler, har gett viktiga upplysningar om hur Hitler och nazismen kunde förtrolla, förföra och tvinga människor att bli del av ett gigantiskt vålsmaskineri, som kulminerade i förintelsen. I den här boken - som är en sammanställning av några av hennes viktigaste reportage - får vi ta del av hennes intervjuer med Stangl, Speer, Leni Riefenstahl (som gjorde den uppmärksammade Viljans Triumf om de nazistiska partidagarna i Nürnberg), Kurt Waltheim (fd generalsekreterare i FN, som höll tyst om sitt nazistiska förflutna) och John Demjanjuk (som felaktigt dömdes för att ha varit en sadistisk fångvaktare i Treblinka) I inledningen av boken berättar hon också om det svåra arbete hon själv hade i en FN organisation vid krigsslutet och året därefter , att identifiera östeuropeiska barn som stulits av nazisterna och placerats i tyska familjer. Om hur hjärtskärande det var att efter flera år i de tyska familjerna återbörda dessa barn till sina biologiska föräldrar i olika östeuropeiska länder. Gitta Sereny skriver med osviklig skärpa och klarsynthet, och beskriver också hur efterkrigstidens tyska generationer förhållit sig till arvet från ”det nära förflutna”. Hur skammen och skulden kom att prägla både barn och barnbarn, och att det inte är förrän på 2000-tqlet som en ung generation tyskar kan börja känna genuin stolthet över sitt land. Men tidigt varnar också Sereny för de högerextrema tendenser som växer sig starka i det gamla DDR efter återföreningen 1990. Det är lätt att föreställa sig att hon skulle känt mkt stor oro över att dragningen till det högerextrema har vidgats och idag omfattar närmare 20-25 % av den tyska befolkningens sympatier, både i öst och väst. Gitta Sereny var besjälad av att bekämpa rasismen i alla dess former, och nazismen var det yttersta, onda uttrycket för en rasism som ligger latent i alla samhällen.
March 8, 2020
The book is a collection of essays, written from the 1970's to the very early 21st century. The writer, Gita Sereny, was born in 1923 in Vienna. Ms. Sereny was objective and fair. She is not Jewish but refused to comply with the Nazis. Ms. Sereny left her native Austria as a teenager. She gave up a career as an actress to become an investigative journalist. During World War II, she cared for orphans in France. Immediately after the war, she investigated the kidnapping of Polish children by the Nazis.
Reading this book was informative and intense. There were times I had to catch my breath. The work is a compilation for readers who have a solid background in Holocaust history. The subject of the essays ranges from descriptions of the post war generation to the writer's experiences during the war to interviews with infamous actors from the period. I read most of the essays, but I skipped a few which were completely outdated. One caveat--I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
The "baby boomers" of Germany grew up in homes, shrouded in mystery, similar to the children of Holocaust survivors did in the 1950's--1970's all over the world. The majority of Jews will squirm at my thesis (derived from reading the book). How can the children of victims be compared to the offspring of perpetrators or bystanders of unspeakable violence? To come of age in a household with unspoken questions and responses is to be ignorant of aspects of one's history, to be insecure and anxious. Growing up with parents preoccupied with unresolved emotions regarding past trauma results in unstable parent-child relationships characterized by the transmission of misundertood grief and guilt. Children assume their complicity in problems their parents experience. Irregardless that children cannot possibly be responsible. Sensing overriding anxiety in a household disrupts the normal psychological development of an individual. Youngsters learn dysfunctional means for dealing with relationships in a home permeated with angst, especially unexplained. The children born in the mid to late 1940's to 1960 in Germany were raised by adults who had witnessed various tragedies of World War II or that their parents were Nazis or fought as soldiers.
The offspring of Holocaust survivors were born to parents scarred in terrible ways, whether they lived in a DP camp, the United States, or Israel. It is interesting that Germans became desentized to the war trials and the plight of the victims. Life moved on, and there was no time or an environment conducive to honest reflection of their complicity. This reaction is similar to the majority of survivors unable to share the horrors of the Holocaust with others. There were jobs to be done, children to be raised, and adjustments to a new life to be made.
America in the 1950's and 1960's was not a place to speak about the dreadful attrocities of World War II. Native born Americans wanted to enjoy the plenty of the post war period and put the Depression and war behind them. Life was fun, pretty, and clean. West Germans wanted to eat again, clean up the rubble, and be accepted in the family of nations. And guilt was too horrible to ponder, accept, and communicate with others. Holocaust survivors in the United States of the post war period aimed to assimilate, procreate, and foremost to be American. No time to think about dead relatives or why the Holocaust occurred. "Holocaust Survivor" was not a designation yet. I dare say most wanted to be normal and left alone.Yet people still whispered, "she was in a 'camp'". And these "survivors" denied the hardships they endured. For German children, growing up, thinking about what one's father, grandfather, or uncle carried out during the war, had to be a living nightmare. Bad news is unpleasant. Not knowing is worse.
The writer interviewed several criminals from World War II. She spoke with Franz Stangl in prison. Mr. Stangl compartmentalized, rationalized, evaded, and repressed his actions. He finally admitted "guilt" to Ms. Sereny and died the next day, still incarcerated.He was an uneducated man which was a commonality among Hitler's highest advisors and generals. Albert Speer was interviewed in his sumptous houses. And he was more arrogant and resistant to introspection. Not surprisingly, he survived prison. He used the word "guilt" in association for his wrongdoing during the war, but he fell short of admitting remorse and repenting. Ms. Sereny observed the John Demjanjuk trial in Israel that began in 1986. She felt he should have been aquitted due to inconsistent evidence, the age of the witnesses, the arguments of the prosecution and defense. The author agreed that this man was a liar and probably engaged in violent acts against innocent civilians. And she stressed that claiming that a case is faulty is not condoning murder and torture.
The women in Hitler's life were a remarkable--not in a positive way--bunch. Leni Riefenstahl, the infamous actress and filmaker, loved Hitler, as did various secretaries. Hitler was attracted to beautiful women. Riefenstahl was a success in her own right; so why she attached herself to the madman is mysterious and bizarre. Again, extreme compartmentalization occured with these women's interactions with Hitler. Their observations and comments are mind-boggling and deeply disturbing. His final secretary calmly described meals with Hitler, attending to his needs, and transcribing his last will and testament. These females did not appear insane but must have been sociopaths in disguise.
I gave the book four stars in lieu of five due to the author's tendency to slight leniency and compassion towards some of the perpetrators.
"The blocking of memory is very simply the inability of the mind to take issue and deal with an experience which is unacceptable to the mind or spirit. It is very dangerous to block the mind: dangerous for the individual, his environment, but also in the context that has not yet even been touched upon tonight--to the whole community." Leopold Lowenthal (from The German Trauma by Gita Sereny)
Reading this book was informative and intense. There were times I had to catch my breath. The work is a compilation for readers who have a solid background in Holocaust history. The subject of the essays ranges from descriptions of the post war generation to the writer's experiences during the war to interviews with infamous actors from the period. I read most of the essays, but I skipped a few which were completely outdated. One caveat--I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
The "baby boomers" of Germany grew up in homes, shrouded in mystery, similar to the children of Holocaust survivors did in the 1950's--1970's all over the world. The majority of Jews will squirm at my thesis (derived from reading the book). How can the children of victims be compared to the offspring of perpetrators or bystanders of unspeakable violence? To come of age in a household with unspoken questions and responses is to be ignorant of aspects of one's history, to be insecure and anxious. Growing up with parents preoccupied with unresolved emotions regarding past trauma results in unstable parent-child relationships characterized by the transmission of misundertood grief and guilt. Children assume their complicity in problems their parents experience. Irregardless that children cannot possibly be responsible. Sensing overriding anxiety in a household disrupts the normal psychological development of an individual. Youngsters learn dysfunctional means for dealing with relationships in a home permeated with angst, especially unexplained. The children born in the mid to late 1940's to 1960 in Germany were raised by adults who had witnessed various tragedies of World War II or that their parents were Nazis or fought as soldiers.
The offspring of Holocaust survivors were born to parents scarred in terrible ways, whether they lived in a DP camp, the United States, or Israel. It is interesting that Germans became desentized to the war trials and the plight of the victims. Life moved on, and there was no time or an environment conducive to honest reflection of their complicity. This reaction is similar to the majority of survivors unable to share the horrors of the Holocaust with others. There were jobs to be done, children to be raised, and adjustments to a new life to be made.
America in the 1950's and 1960's was not a place to speak about the dreadful attrocities of World War II. Native born Americans wanted to enjoy the plenty of the post war period and put the Depression and war behind them. Life was fun, pretty, and clean. West Germans wanted to eat again, clean up the rubble, and be accepted in the family of nations. And guilt was too horrible to ponder, accept, and communicate with others. Holocaust survivors in the United States of the post war period aimed to assimilate, procreate, and foremost to be American. No time to think about dead relatives or why the Holocaust occurred. "Holocaust Survivor" was not a designation yet. I dare say most wanted to be normal and left alone.Yet people still whispered, "she was in a 'camp'". And these "survivors" denied the hardships they endured. For German children, growing up, thinking about what one's father, grandfather, or uncle carried out during the war, had to be a living nightmare. Bad news is unpleasant. Not knowing is worse.
The writer interviewed several criminals from World War II. She spoke with Franz Stangl in prison. Mr. Stangl compartmentalized, rationalized, evaded, and repressed his actions. He finally admitted "guilt" to Ms. Sereny and died the next day, still incarcerated.He was an uneducated man which was a commonality among Hitler's highest advisors and generals. Albert Speer was interviewed in his sumptous houses. And he was more arrogant and resistant to introspection. Not surprisingly, he survived prison. He used the word "guilt" in association for his wrongdoing during the war, but he fell short of admitting remorse and repenting. Ms. Sereny observed the John Demjanjuk trial in Israel that began in 1986. She felt he should have been aquitted due to inconsistent evidence, the age of the witnesses, the arguments of the prosecution and defense. The author agreed that this man was a liar and probably engaged in violent acts against innocent civilians. And she stressed that claiming that a case is faulty is not condoning murder and torture.
The women in Hitler's life were a remarkable--not in a positive way--bunch. Leni Riefenstahl, the infamous actress and filmaker, loved Hitler, as did various secretaries. Hitler was attracted to beautiful women. Riefenstahl was a success in her own right; so why she attached herself to the madman is mysterious and bizarre. Again, extreme compartmentalization occured with these women's interactions with Hitler. Their observations and comments are mind-boggling and deeply disturbing. His final secretary calmly described meals with Hitler, attending to his needs, and transcribing his last will and testament. These females did not appear insane but must have been sociopaths in disguise.
I gave the book four stars in lieu of five due to the author's tendency to slight leniency and compassion towards some of the perpetrators.
"The blocking of memory is very simply the inability of the mind to take issue and deal with an experience which is unacceptable to the mind or spirit. It is very dangerous to block the mind: dangerous for the individual, his environment, but also in the context that has not yet even been touched upon tonight--to the whole community." Leopold Lowenthal (from The German Trauma by Gita Sereny)
September 26, 2025
This book is a collection of essays from Sereny’s storied career as a writer and journalist privy to some of the most dangerous men and events in recorded human history. We are introduced to all manner of people, from genuine heroines like Liliane Crespelle to the ‘children of the Reich,’ the progeny of top Nazi officials such as Martin Bormann Jr. Smaller, more intimate profiles are rounded out by longer investigative pieces. One should read the books she has published, of course, but her highly abridged essays on Franz Stangl (the commandant at Sobibor and Treblinka) and Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect and later Minister of Armaments and War Production) give a sense of her impeccable interviewing techniques and a flavor of her general philosophy.
The taste is always that of a bitter medicine, because Sereny refuses to concede even an inch when confronting—both within and without—the faintest whiffs of moral compromise. Sereny recounts the fortuitous circumstances that led her to a Nuremberg rally when she was just a little girl, and the indelible feelings of awe and triumph the pageantry and syncopation of a throng engendered in her. It is the essential question which confounded her own sense of morality and which sustained, as some critics have called it, her obsession with evil. But if it is indeed an obsession—and I remain unconvinced on that point—it must be said to be a necessary one, for as Sereny demonstrates in forensic detail, “the step from wanting to survive, or just getting the necessary violence over with, to enjoying the doing of it, is frighteningly small” (360).
It is these little evasions on the road to moral deterioration which is most fascinating and, certainly, alarming. Sereny is too conscious of that darkness within herself, and its potentialities to metastasize into something greater, to be hypocritical or pontificating both to her interviewees and readers. She recites the coldness with which she treated two German officers during her work with war orphans in occupied France as instructive. Day after day, she took out her frustrations on these two men who nevertheless continued to offer succor and provisions to the orphanage. It was only after they disappeared that she eventually learned that they had both been firm anti-Nazis. One was sent to the eastern front to his death, and the other to a concentration camp. They were, she realized too late, good men.
The lesson here is not the banal one about book covers and judgement thereof. The lesson, for Sereny, is more fundamental: it is the easy slippage in our minds, the mental indolence that resorts to Manichean narratives, that coy way in which our thoughts slip through the tiniest loopholes at the expense of critical judgement and, worse, total honesty to ourselves and to those around us. The truth is always there to be found but, as Sereny vividly demonstrates, it takes a Herculean effort to force ourselves to look it steadily in the eye. The slightest relaxation of effort leads, inevitably, to mistruth and comforting fantasies which poison everything—our governments, our societies, our relationship with our family, our individual love for even the most cherished people in our lives. And it is, in the final analysis, a betrayal of ourselves.
There is hope, nonetheless, for redemption too. It does not come easy. Even now, I am unsure if I have the capacity to get behind Sereny fully when she writes of Speer: “Albert Speer is no martyr. But nor is he a fraud. He is a haunted man who has battled for three decades to recapture his lost morality. Unless we deny all men the potential for regeneration, this man, I believe, must now be allowed peace” (285). It seems almost grotesque. How could a man who knowingly employed slave labor to prolong an immoral war be allowed peace? But if there is one other throughline in Sereny’s work, it is that growth and good, even if innate, do not come easy. Further, one must reject and give up that which is easy in order to become someone different, no mean feat. When it happens, if it happens at all, it must necessarily proceed from an understanding of the preciousness and sanctity of an individual’s emotions and vulnerability. “[P]eople’s need to feel must never be abused. Many years later,” Sereny recalls, “when Speer explained to me how Hitler had exploited people’s emotions, I remembered my own temptations on stage in America [giving lectures on what was happening in Europe], and was glad I had resisted them [emphasis mine]” (22).
Global issues clearly have vast import, and crises can feel overwhelming. Yet, it is really in the interstices of the quotidian, in the minute decisions we make daily and the passing attitudes we hold, from which springs both the promise of evil, and the assurance of good. Many of these men and women, as Sereny shows, were basically decent and normal humans. There was, however, a refusal towards unflinching honesty with themselves and others. There was no respect for the truth of emotions and feelings. They always sought excuses, and their focus was always, in the end, on their individual, selfish experience and why it had to take priority and why there was no other way. But there is always another way. And everyone, as the countless examples of self-sacrificial heroism and moral clarity reinforce, “has the right to say no” (362). It was the confluence of upbringing, childhood traumas, historical circumstances, totalitarian fear, and the personal propensity towards evasiveness, justifications, and untruths in everyday conduct that led people into an abyss from which their younger, more innocent selves would have recoiled. We cannot control most of the factors that impinge on our lives, but we can control how we choose to react and live from this moment on, and that, Sereny teaches us, is ultimately the most decisive for good or for ill.
The taste is always that of a bitter medicine, because Sereny refuses to concede even an inch when confronting—both within and without—the faintest whiffs of moral compromise. Sereny recounts the fortuitous circumstances that led her to a Nuremberg rally when she was just a little girl, and the indelible feelings of awe and triumph the pageantry and syncopation of a throng engendered in her. It is the essential question which confounded her own sense of morality and which sustained, as some critics have called it, her obsession with evil. But if it is indeed an obsession—and I remain unconvinced on that point—it must be said to be a necessary one, for as Sereny demonstrates in forensic detail, “the step from wanting to survive, or just getting the necessary violence over with, to enjoying the doing of it, is frighteningly small” (360).
It is these little evasions on the road to moral deterioration which is most fascinating and, certainly, alarming. Sereny is too conscious of that darkness within herself, and its potentialities to metastasize into something greater, to be hypocritical or pontificating both to her interviewees and readers. She recites the coldness with which she treated two German officers during her work with war orphans in occupied France as instructive. Day after day, she took out her frustrations on these two men who nevertheless continued to offer succor and provisions to the orphanage. It was only after they disappeared that she eventually learned that they had both been firm anti-Nazis. One was sent to the eastern front to his death, and the other to a concentration camp. They were, she realized too late, good men.
The lesson here is not the banal one about book covers and judgement thereof. The lesson, for Sereny, is more fundamental: it is the easy slippage in our minds, the mental indolence that resorts to Manichean narratives, that coy way in which our thoughts slip through the tiniest loopholes at the expense of critical judgement and, worse, total honesty to ourselves and to those around us. The truth is always there to be found but, as Sereny vividly demonstrates, it takes a Herculean effort to force ourselves to look it steadily in the eye. The slightest relaxation of effort leads, inevitably, to mistruth and comforting fantasies which poison everything—our governments, our societies, our relationship with our family, our individual love for even the most cherished people in our lives. And it is, in the final analysis, a betrayal of ourselves.
There is hope, nonetheless, for redemption too. It does not come easy. Even now, I am unsure if I have the capacity to get behind Sereny fully when she writes of Speer: “Albert Speer is no martyr. But nor is he a fraud. He is a haunted man who has battled for three decades to recapture his lost morality. Unless we deny all men the potential for regeneration, this man, I believe, must now be allowed peace” (285). It seems almost grotesque. How could a man who knowingly employed slave labor to prolong an immoral war be allowed peace? But if there is one other throughline in Sereny’s work, it is that growth and good, even if innate, do not come easy. Further, one must reject and give up that which is easy in order to become someone different, no mean feat. When it happens, if it happens at all, it must necessarily proceed from an understanding of the preciousness and sanctity of an individual’s emotions and vulnerability. “[P]eople’s need to feel must never be abused. Many years later,” Sereny recalls, “when Speer explained to me how Hitler had exploited people’s emotions, I remembered my own temptations on stage in America [giving lectures on what was happening in Europe], and was glad I had resisted them [emphasis mine]” (22).
Global issues clearly have vast import, and crises can feel overwhelming. Yet, it is really in the interstices of the quotidian, in the minute decisions we make daily and the passing attitudes we hold, from which springs both the promise of evil, and the assurance of good. Many of these men and women, as Sereny shows, were basically decent and normal humans. There was, however, a refusal towards unflinching honesty with themselves and others. There was no respect for the truth of emotions and feelings. They always sought excuses, and their focus was always, in the end, on their individual, selfish experience and why it had to take priority and why there was no other way. But there is always another way. And everyone, as the countless examples of self-sacrificial heroism and moral clarity reinforce, “has the right to say no” (362). It was the confluence of upbringing, childhood traumas, historical circumstances, totalitarian fear, and the personal propensity towards evasiveness, justifications, and untruths in everyday conduct that led people into an abyss from which their younger, more innocent selves would have recoiled. We cannot control most of the factors that impinge on our lives, but we can control how we choose to react and live from this moment on, and that, Sereny teaches us, is ultimately the most decisive for good or for ill.
April 3, 2013
Gitta Sereny has been writing about Nazi crimes for many years, most notably in her books Into That Darkness (about the Treblinka death camp) and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth This book is a brief summation of her experiences with Germany and Germans between the years 1938 and 2001. Among the subjects covered are the kidnappings of Polish children and the more "Aryan" of them being put up for adoption by childless German couples; Holocaust denial; the "Hitler Diaries" and other hoaxes; the psychological burden visited on succeeding generations of German children by what their parents did during the war; analyses of a number of trials of Nazi criminals; short profiles of Kurt Waldheim, Albert Speer, Franz Stangl, and Traudl Junge.
The German Trauma is a good introduction to the study of Nazi crimes from several different angles.
The German Trauma is a good introduction to the study of Nazi crimes from several different angles.
May 12, 2013
After decades spent probing for some "new truth" about the men who slaughtered millions, Gitta Sereny is strikingly unable to convey what she has learned. Offering some thinly considered platitudes about the ills of "racism," she speaks about the Nazi gas chambers in the same breath as "the disproportionate number of blacks on death row in America" and "the apparent unwillingness of the rich white West to supply poor black Africa" with medication for AIDS. This conjunction of incommensurables echoes the self-exculpatory refrain emitted by the various accused and convicted war criminals that she writes about in this book.
March 29, 2025
I've always been curious about the German experience after world war 2. While there is countless books about the war and the horrors brought on the world by Hitler and the Nazi regime. But there isn't much written about what life was like for the following generations of Germany. They were the aggressors and committed evil so vile that it is beyond comprehension. If you're a German citizen, how do you come to terms with what happened, particularly if you were born after the end of the war.
The German Trauma explains some of the trouble Germany had confronting their past. How do you come to terms with your parents or grandparents involvement in the war? How do you go about making sure that nothing like that ever happens again? How do you separate the guilty from the innocent from those that did terrible things to just stay alive? How do you justly punish the guilty in the aftermath and chaos after war, especially when the guilty are responsible for mass murder on a industrial scale?
The answers is, with terrible difficulty. The sheer scale of atrocity, the extermination camps, the slave labour, the millions Jews, Catholics, Gays, Gypsies, Russians, Communists, Disabled who died, there is no way to ever have a true reckoning for what was done. A thought provoking look at how a nation comes to terms with its own dark past.
The German Trauma explains some of the trouble Germany had confronting their past. How do you come to terms with your parents or grandparents involvement in the war? How do you go about making sure that nothing like that ever happens again? How do you separate the guilty from the innocent from those that did terrible things to just stay alive? How do you justly punish the guilty in the aftermath and chaos after war, especially when the guilty are responsible for mass murder on a industrial scale?
The answers is, with terrible difficulty. The sheer scale of atrocity, the extermination camps, the slave labour, the millions Jews, Catholics, Gays, Gypsies, Russians, Communists, Disabled who died, there is no way to ever have a true reckoning for what was done. A thought provoking look at how a nation comes to terms with its own dark past.
September 2, 2023
"For a long time, if anyone asked me about my past, I lost my voice. Now it's the opposite -- if I don't answer, I suffocate." - daughter of a Nazi general.
This book is a series of essays covering post-war Germany, the handling of difficult memories, prosecution of war criminals, repatriation of stolen children, hoaxed and the question of a German identity. For those with first-hand experience of Nazi Germany, holding the memories of that time takes them in one of two directions: either they mention and discuss it frequently, even to the exasperation of their children who feel like they aren't present in modern life, or they enter complete, illogical denial, holding onto falsehoods of innocence even when admitting to the lesser crimes might save their life.
Sereny has an interesting, very clear and direct but unsentimental prose style which cuts to the heart of topics. She is, above all, fair and respectful, even of the worst people. Topics in this book are dealt with deftly, but it still often left me with a pit in my stomach and took three times longer than usual to finish this book.
This book is a series of essays covering post-war Germany, the handling of difficult memories, prosecution of war criminals, repatriation of stolen children, hoaxed and the question of a German identity. For those with first-hand experience of Nazi Germany, holding the memories of that time takes them in one of two directions: either they mention and discuss it frequently, even to the exasperation of their children who feel like they aren't present in modern life, or they enter complete, illogical denial, holding onto falsehoods of innocence even when admitting to the lesser crimes might save their life.
Sereny has an interesting, very clear and direct but unsentimental prose style which cuts to the heart of topics. She is, above all, fair and respectful, even of the worst people. Topics in this book are dealt with deftly, but it still often left me with a pit in my stomach and took three times longer than usual to finish this book.
January 25, 2021
Sereny is at her best in her articles about Nazi memorabilia forgeries, Globocnick, Speer and Stangl. Her various texts about Germany's youth, however, come across as poor pieces of hit-and-run ethnography, juxtaposing a few (all too linear and clear cut) quotations from young German to make sweeping statements about recent ideological changes in the country.
Her constant name-dropping and love for aristocracy are quite annoying.
Her constant name-dropping and love for aristocracy are quite annoying.
April 6, 2021
An incredible book. It examines the way that Germany and other countries have dealt with the memories and responsibility and guilt of WWII and the Nazi horrors. Very thoughtful and measured, it doesn’t shy away from the awful things that happened but at the same time tries to balance that out with empathy for all sides.
January 24, 2023
Gitta Sereny era un'ottima scrittrice e in questo libro vi sono diversi articoli scritti su argomenti inerenti il dopoguerra vissuto dai tedeschi e la descrizione di alcuni personaggi del nazismo. Molto interessante
September 30, 2017
"Ciò che mi ha sempre motivata [...] è la ricerca di cosa conduca così spesso e così prontamente gli esseri umani ad abbracciare la violenza e l'amoralità." (p. 9)
October 21, 2020
Note: To anyone who tries to order this book and can’t find it, the same collection of essays is published under the title The Healing Wound, which seems more readily available.
January 10, 2012
This book should be read more than once - by everyone that can read and think!
February 12, 2016
Very good read. A reminder of the actual horrors of the Nazis. Some of our politicians should face her questioning.
April 11, 2016
A beautifully written book that gives you an understanding of the complexities of culture, society and politics.
November 13, 2016
fairly interesting, especially the chapter about Franz Stangl
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