I love it when the heroine is equally obsessed as the hero is with her or more so I loved this one!! It doesn’t end in a hea but for this couple it was a hea for them in their own way! Det framstår som banalt när jag gör jämförelserna, men det finns en poäng i det. Stangl utsattes för just samma allmänmänskliga dilemman som du och jag, liksom han drevs av samma psykologiska drivkrafter. Han råkade bara befinna sig i en väldigt annorlunda situation med väldigt mer allvarliga konsekvenser. A questo proposito, Sereny mette a confronto i racconti e i ricordi di Richard Glazer, ebreo cèco, sopravvissuto a Treblinka, proprio con quelli del personaggio principale del suo studio: i primi lucidi, dettagliati, privi di retorica, elaborati, pregnanti – l’altro, invece, si contraddice, cambia versione, indora la pillola, a se stesso e all’ascoltatrice. Franz Stangl var en doldis för mig, trots att han, enligt bokens baksidestext var en av de "blott fyra män" som styrde nazitysklands utrotnings-/dödsläger. I boken intervjuas han och människor i hans närhet i ett försök att komma underfund med vad som kan driva en människa att delta i det industrialiserade massmördandet av miljontals vanliga människor; civila - män, kvinnor och barn vars brott bara bestod i att vara fel sorts människor. Men något enstaka undantag (och med förbehållet att det till störst del handlar om att måla upp psykologiskt porträtt) för Sereny ett sakligt resonemang där hon väger motstridiga uppgifter mot varandra och söker både förståelse och en sanning. 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.

Into the Darkness: Book One of The Darkness Series eBook

Stangl lived with what he'd done for decades. The walls he built within himself were strong enough to withstand years facilitating mass-murder, a decade living free as a war-criminal, and a damning trial exposing the scope of his culpability. What ultimately brought Stangl's psychological fortress down was simply being asked to tell his life story in his own words.Although it unmasks the liars, killers and torturers responsible for Tazmamart, it refuses to dwell on them. Although it is told in the first person, it is not an autobiography. Although it is technically a novel, it is a novel stripped, like its subject, of all life's comforts.

Into The Darkness: A Mystery Thriller (Mitch Tanner Book 2)

i'm kinda disappointed that i didn't cry and i cry to literally anything emotional. my eyes were glassy but the chapters were so short that i didn't get the full effect. that and the fact that i already figured out what will happen at the end. All who lived within a few miles of the death camps knew what was going on. There were the trains and the smells. The people who worked the trains across Poland and throughout Europe, saw and heard the crowded and anguishing railroad cars filled with the starving and dying.This need to distance himself from the horror showed during the interviews. Stangl would slip into "the popular vernacular of his childhood whenever he had to deal with questions he found difficult to answer", a habit Sereny attributes to Stangl subconsciously seeking refuge in more comfortable language. Sereny asked Stangl several times about the fate of prisoners whom he'd spoken about with affection. His response each time: "I don't know," though he surely could have guessed. Sereny wrote Into That Darkness some years before her other great book of the psychology of significant WWII actors, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. I found it didn't have quite the polish and journalistic flair of that later work, but it is still an amazing insight into the mind of a man who did terrible things in the name of Nazism, in this case Franzl Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka. The author tries to comprehend how this man, who is sitting in front of her and looks absolutely normal, ended up committing crimes against humanity. The author is highly talented, and you can tell she wrote this book with her heart and soul. She went into a very deep, dark place with this one. That ending to me was everything and touched my soul. I will remember this book for years to come. An old (1990) Barbara Michaels I found at the library giveaway, that I hadn't read before! It was enjoyable. Who is sending antique rings with strangely ominous and threatening messages? Where did the ancient royal jewels come from? Who is this stranger her grandfather left half his business to? Not really a stranger, for some reason no one thinks 3 years is long enough to get to know someone.

Into the Dark by Dana Isaly | Goodreads Into the Dark by Dana Isaly | Goodreads

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. Within hours of this last interview, Stangl was dead. Suicide was suspected, but the postmortem evidence pointed to heart-failure. The implication was clear; Stangl had been crushed by the culpability he had denied for so many years.Another theme throughout the book is the Vatican's part in the holocaust. If it weren't for the church's cold-hearted passivity, perhaps Hitler would have ended the concentration-camps. It is a small possibility, but one never-the-less. I understand that the church was afraid to lose power and perhaps be doomed as well, but it comes down to a matter of faith, something the church is very good at practicing otherwise. However, Stangl was not a fanatic. He sought, according to his own confessions, to do his job as it should be done. Stangl wants to convince the author that he did not have another choice. The former commandant attempts to shift the blame onto Globocnik, who was his superior and had been responsible for the murder of around three million men, women, and children. Stangl seems to have thought that Globocnik would not allow him to get out. If he had rejected his appointment as commandant of the extermination camps he would have been arrested or even killed. But the truth is no one can say what could have happened to Franz Stangl had he firmly refused to do what he did. I never saw Stangl hurt anyone” Stan Szmajzner [Sobibor survivor] said, “What was special about him was his arrogance. And his enormous pleasure in his work and his situation. None of the others – although they were, in different ways so much worse than he – showed this to such an extent. He had this perpetual smile on his face… No, I don’t think it was a nervous smile, it was just that he was happy.” In what readers will probably find the most controversial aspect of the book Sereny makes quite clear that she believes Pope Pius XXII knew about what was going on in Poland and did next to nothing to help. The Vatican is part of the story, as it was the Vatican that helped Stangl (and many other Nazis) to flee Germany and settle in Brazil. While the section on the Vatican is long, it's also intriguing. I'll leave it to others to decide what the Pope could or should have done. It's clear, however, that Sereny believes he failed humanity. Sixty five Jews survived Treblinka. Some because they had skills that were useful to the Nazis; a very few others escaped in the revolt of August 1943 when the camp was set on fire. Transports to Treblinka were beginning to wind down by that time anyway, because the Nazis were running out of people to kill.