From
the inside flap
“In
1940, the German sons and daughters of great Nazi dignitaries Himmler, Göring,
Hess, Frank, Bormann, Höss, Speer, and Mengele were children of privilege at
four, five and ten years old, surrounded by affectionate, all-powerful parents.
Although innocent and unaware of what was happening at the time, they
eventually discovered the extent of their fathers’ occupations: these men─their
fathers, who were capable of loving their children and receiving love in
return─were leaders of the Third Reich and would later be convicted as
monstrous war criminals. For these children, the German defeat was an
earth-shattering source of family rupture, the end of opulence, and the jarring
discovery of Hitler’s atrocities.
“How
did the offspring of leaders deal with the aftermath of the war and the
skeletons that would haunt them forever? Some chose to disown their past.
Others did not. Some condemned their fathers; others worshipped them
unconditionally to the end. In this. . . book, Tania Crasnianski examines the
responsibility of eight descendants of Nazi notables, caught somewhere between
stigmatization, worship, and amnesia. By tracing the unique experiences of
these children, she probes at the relationship between them and their fathers
and examines the idea of how responsibility for the fault is continually borne
by the descendants.”
Review
Crasnianski’s
short-chapter recountings of what happened to the families of key high-level
Nazis in post-war years is deft, tightly edited, near-impossible to set down
and easily accessible to (even) casual and squeamish readers─Crasnianski
provides enough visual details to allow us to picture what she is saying, but
she does not dwell on anything long enough to be gratuitous about it. Saying
this is a fun read is too much of a stretch, given its subject matter, but it
is a fast-burn and relatively painless one. It is also a book I hope to re-read
in the near future, and possibly own.
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