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Rating: 
Summary: Examination of guilty conciseness
Review: Gita Sereny's "Into the Darkness" is based on a series of interviews with former Treblinka extermination camp commander Franz Stangl, his family and associates. It reports, beyond reproach, on the machinery of extermination, justification, and cover up of the Holocaust. The book seek to answer the question how an ordinary citizen like Franz Stangl can raise to the complicity in unimaginable horror and still live with himself for many years after that. Mrs. Sereny shows how deeply ingrained the moral fiber of being is in the soul after all, how important is it in order to live in peace with oneself, and how difficult is the struggle of repression, justification and denial is for one guilty. How cunning evil is in diffusing its scope beyond recognition of individual responsibility; and how at the end in the darkest recesses of his soul the guilty knows and finally has courage to say the truth. How adapt the human soul is in building barriers, masks and ritual to hide the ugliness and suffering. Without taking sides, in cool and non-judgmental journalistic style, narrative is a masterpiece of it genre. Difficult book to read no doubt, because the magnitude of horror is not masked by petty emotion. This book does not offer any answers, any solution, it just sadly reports on what went on.
Rating: 
Summary: Why Do People Do What They Do?...remains unanswered.
Review: Gitta Sereny was a British journo who had attended Franz Stangl's trial in 1970, and she had interviewed him in prison in Duesseldorf in 1971. She had also interviewed others, including survivors and keepers of Treblinka, as well as his wife and one of his daughters in Brazil. He was caught in 1967. But just to be sure that the author's intense interest in this horrible subject left no doubt about her own conscience, she had made it clear to Stangl (and to her readers)...that she... "abhorred everything the Nazis had stood for and done." It's a well written account of this SS Colonel's life and job, beginning with his involvement of the Nazi's euthanatia program, his first posting to Sobibor, his subsequent assignment as commandant of Treblinka, and his post war escape to Brazil via Italy and Syria. But the author digresses when she devotes 20 pages about the Vatican's probable Nazi sympathies. We learn that Stangl was clever and practical in getting train-loads of people to shed their clothes and possessions and to walk into large "bath houses," complete with simulated sprinkler heads; and low volume ceilings to minimize the time of suffocation from the exhaust of the camp's 250hp diesel generator engine. Curiously, we also learn that it took only a handful of real (home country) Germans to make Treblinka tick. The clever Germans in fact had delegated this killing business to this Austrian Stangl. And he in turn had recruited hundreds of Chekoslovaks and Ukrainians. Employed as guards, they would do all the dirty work. But they in turn would select healthy and strong arriving prisoners, called worker jews, and put them to work carrying the asphyxiated dead from the "baths" unto the open pit ovens, and then to shovel their ashes into holes dug into the earth. The author is obsessed in finding out how and why an otherwise ordinary family man like this Stangl (and maybe all the other living Stangls in the rest of the World, and those yet to be born) could legitimize his conscience in being responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people and continue to live a relatively normal life. But it's an age old question and it doesn't get answered. Not here and probably not ever. Largely, because it's impossible to get into people's minds. And for that matter, the author could as well have asked the Colonel of the Enola Gay why and how on August 6th, 1945 he was able to overcome his conscience and nuke Hiroshima, knowingly killing 50,000 mostly innocent men, women and children in 2 seconds. Even today, we live in a World that has gone mad, but life goes on.
Rating:
Summary: Why Do People Do What They Do?...remains unanswered.
Review: Gitta Sereny was a British journo who had attended Franz Stangl's trial in 1970, and she had interviewed him in prison in Duesseldorf in 1971. She had also interviewed others, including survivors and keepers of Treblinka, as well as his wife and one of his daughters in Brazil. He was caught in 1967. But just to be sure that the author's intense interest in this horrible subject left no doubt about her own conscience, she had made it clear to Stangl (and to her readers)...that she... "abhorred everything the Nazis had stood for and done." It's a well written account of this SS Colonel's life and job, beginning with his involvement of the Nazi's euthanatia program, his first posting to Sobibor, his subsequent assignment as commandant of Treblinka, and his post war escape to Brazil via Italy and Syria. But the author digresses when she devotes 20 pages about the Vatican's probable Nazi sympathies. We learn that Stangl was clever and practical in getting train-loads of people to shed their clothes and possessions and to walk into large "bath houses," complete with simulated sprinkler heads; and low volume ceilings to minimize the time of suffocation from the exhaust of the camp's 250hp diesel generator engine. Curiously, we also learn that it took only a handful of real (home country) Germans to make Treblinka tick. The clever Germans in fact had delegated this killing business to this Austrian Stangl. And he in turn had recruited hundreds of Chekoslovaks and Ukrainians. Employed as guards, they would do all the dirty work. But they in turn would select healthy and strong arriving prisoners, called worker jews, and put them to work carrying the asphyxiated dead from the "baths" unto the open pit ovens, and then to shovel their ashes into holes dug into the earth. The author is obsessed in finding out how and why an otherwise ordinary family man like this Stangl (and maybe all the other living Stangls in the rest of the World, and those yet to be born) could legitimize his conscience in being responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people and continue to live a relatively normal life. But it's an age old question and it doesn't get answered. Not here and probably not ever. Largely, because it's impossible to get into people's minds. And for that matter, the author could as well have asked the Colonel of the Enola Gay why and how on August 6th, 1945 he was able to overcome his conscience and nuke Hiroshima, knowingly killing 50,000 mostly innocent men, women and children in 2 seconds. Even today, we live in a World that has gone mad, but life goes on.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on the Holocaust
Review: I read this book after devouring Gitta Sereny's wonderful biography on Nazi Armaments Minister, Albert Speer. This offering is superior to anything else on the Holocaust, bar none. Sereny spent many hours interviewing the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl. He reveals in dispassionate tones the horrors of this death camp: the subterfuge to confuse those arriving to the camp, the fake train station, the beautiful gardens... it's almost surreal to read this man's words. More disquieting is that Stangl appears to be rather normal, though obviously a psychopath since the concept of guilt is alien to him. He loved his wife, was a devoted father and was an attractive personality, yet he was involved in monstrous crimes. Sereny also interviews Jews who survived Treblinka by working in the "clothes factory," and she also interviews some of the S.S. guards who presided over this horrific complex. But the heart and soul of the book is Stangl, whom she interviewed while he was in a German prison in 1972. When she asked him, "When you saw children about to be gassed, did you think of your own children?" Stangl vacantly looked away and said mutely, "I don't know." This book should be required reading for those who deny the Holocaust or seek to make excuses for Nazi genocide. Sereny is a masterful writer and every word of this book is gripping. This is not a product to skim haphazardly, it's as engrossing as anything ever written about genocide in the 20th century. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
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Summary: Thoughtful and Thought-Provoking Work!
Review: The genius behind the choice for this book's title revolves around what for me, as well as for many other students of the Holocaust, is the central question the phenomenon of organized mass murder inevitably raises; how could it be true that ordinary men are capable of such unspeakable horror on such an unimaginable scale, willing to become enthusiastic participants in the ritualistic murder of millions of their fellow human beings. If one is honest, he or she begins to raise some very disturbing questions about just what kind of a biological organism we are part of, ourselves included as un-indicted co-conspirators by way of the murder we hold somewhere in our own hearts. Yet, even if you grant me the kindness of agreeing with my supposition, it still does not explain how such men as the individual profiled in this book, Herr Franz Stangl, the one-time commander of the death camp at Treblinka, could manage to swing his body out of bed every day for the decades since he was captured by the Allies and the war ended for him. His personal testimony shows once more how the subtle political use of language and the countless attempts to justify themselves through euphemistic references to the so-called "Jewish problem" seems to aid such individuals in playing a kind of psychological hide-and seek with themselves by aligning their actions with the purposes and goals of Germany during the war. And yet, quite poignantly the interview with Stangl also illustrates how vain and hopeless such efforts to blithely paper over the past really are. Somewhere in the darkness of one's own soul an individual knows all he is guilty of. Or so we would suppose. So what we have in this thoughtful and penetrating book is a glimpse into the demon's eye, and find that perhaps Hannah Arendt was right when she said it was somehow too banal and trite to be believed or trusted. In truth, just as the author contends, the only way out of the searing heat of the conscience's cauldron is to face the truth and admit as best we can our part in it. Indeed, in this work she bravely illustrates, through Commander Stangl, how one's personal choices change us, often in most frightening ways. Like Stangl, we must all go bravely into the darkness to find the truth that will indeed set us free. In this sense the author's use of so many anecdotal situations is instructive, illustrating just how wide the gate to hell and damnation is, through a variety of variously disguised and decorated entrances. In this regard, I particularly enjoyed her rather erudite argument condemning the indifference and cupidity of both Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church regarding their studied and sustained political and ethical indifference to the continuing operation of the death camps. In summary, this book provides the reader with an opportunity to be transported to a wasteland where evil stands alone and unafraid in the cold light of day, where too much talk and too little compassion, too much self-serving cowardice and too few examples of individual courage co-exist side by side, and where you can have an opportunity to listen as all of a lifetime of careful rationalization and intellectual compartmentalizing come crashing down, as Stangl finally comes to terms with the monstrous aspects of his own tortured soul. This is a memorable book, one that bears careful reading and a good bit of independent thought, but one I can heartily recommend.
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Summary: GITTA SERENY'S BEST WORK
Review: There is a moment in this book about Franz Stangl, the commandant of the death camp Treblinka, in which his wife, who is visiting, learned what the camp is doing. She rushed out to meet him on his way home from "work". "I said, 'I know what you are doing in Sobibor. My God, how can they? What are you doing in this? What is your part in it?' Her husband answered, 'Look, little one, please calm down, please. You must believe me. I have nothing to do with any of this.' I said, 'How can you be there and have nothing to do with it?' And he answered, 'My work is purely administrative ....' 'You mean you don't see it happen?' I asked. 'Oh, yes,' he answered. 'I see it. But I don't do anything to anybody.'" Gitta Sereny, who may be the world's best interviewer, sat down with Franz Stangl over a long period of time while he was in prison. She interviewed him, Frau Stangl, their friends, relatives, those who finally tracked him down after the war, and survivors of the camps. She is above all patient. She listens. Stangl's story is a familiar one, and not just in Nazi Germany. We see and hear frequently only what we want to see and hear. We remember what is convenient to remember. As I write this, the US press is aglow with reports and opinions regarding the story that the former Senator Kerry has admitted killing civilians in Vietnam. Surprise and shock, as if we were hearing such a report for the first time. As if we aren't capable of the same. As if we are always simply doing our job, as if doing our job were a virtue and a shield against responsibility for evil. Yes, 30,000 children die of hunger every day. Yes, the clothes I'm wearing were manufactured by a ten year old working fourteen hour days. Yes, my SUV is helping destroy life on earth. Yes, what I do today is making the world unlivable for my grandchildren. Yes, I see it. But I'm not doing anything to anybody. In the end, Stangl admits. "But I was there. So yes, in reality I share the guilt .... Because my guilt ... my guilt ... only now in these talks ... now that I have talked about it all for the first time .... My guilt is that I am still here. That is my guilt. I should have died. That was my guilt." He died nineteen hours later of heart failure. Sereny takes us into something much like Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". But here, through her skill, there is a realization, too late and too little for Stangl and his victims. We, however, still have time. This may be a hopeful book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book looks at a man many would disregard. Rather than dismissing him as a monster, and refusing to consider what he might have in common with ordinary humans, the author takes him seriously as an individual, as a man. She doesn't justify him or make excuses for him. But we will only hurt ourselves if we refuse to look honestly at evil in the world, and in ourselves. Besides this, the book is both excellent journalism and excellent history. It fills a crucial gap in the history of the holocaust, not only for those who would like to compile facts but for those who would like to understand how the horrors came about.
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Summary: Nothing like you'd expect
Review: This book's title and cover lead one to believe that the reader will read stories of heroic people sheltering Jews in their homes, or anecdotes from survivors of Auschwitz. Indeed we do hear from survivors of death-camps, but only to corroborate the central piece of the book: the author's talk with Franz Stangl. This book is a fresh look at the Holocaust - through the eyes of the persecutors. This approach is captivating throughout, and adding to the intrigue is the depth to which the author and Stangl converse. Here is a man who is taking full advantage of the opportunity to bare his soul and try to lift the weight of 900,000 souls off his shoulders. He is trying to finally come to grips with the horrors that went on under his control. At times we see a man as helpless as the prisoners he controlled. Other times, Stangl is unapologetic. In the course of the talks, he shows readers what Treblinka was like for those forced to live through it. This new look at the Holocaust is fascinating throughout. No account of anything, especially such a vast tragedy as the Nazi's Final Solution, ought to be complete without hearing about life on both sides of the trenches.
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Summary: A Scary and Enlightening Book
Review: When I first picked up Sereny's book I expected to read the biography of a true monster. After all, Stangl had been the commander of the Treblinka death camp and had been responsible for the murder of almost a million human beings. Obviously a "normal" person could not have completed this task. What is scary about the book is that Stengl is no monster, at least in the traditional sence. It was not that he had no sence of right or wrong, or that he was a sadist, or that he was oblivious to his task. Rather, he was an individual who had the ability to not look to far into himself and to let others make his moral decisions. Sereny does an amazing job giving us an insight into Stangl. She also attempts to put his conduct into a wider spectrum. For instance, Stangl uses the treaty between the Vatican and Hitler as an excuse to justify his actions. While it is just an excuse, Sereny rightfully questions the Vatican action and the ability of the Church to stop actions that they choose to, but not the Final Solution. Stangl's evolution from a nonpolitical individual to the head of the Treblinka death camp is the main focus of the book. She does an amazing job tracing his gradual journey from a participant in the euthanasia program to Treblinka. What is insightful is that Stangl knew that what he was doing was monsterous. The proof is the lengths that he went to ensure that his wife would not find out. The final interview with Stangl, where he comes close to admitting his crimes, and his sudden death 20 hours later, is perphaps his final determination that what he did to nearly a million people was a monsterous act which was impossible to justify. Sereny's book is a must for all of us who desire to learn about the sources of evil. But if you are looking for a clear and clean answer you will be disappointed. While Stangl's acts were undoubtedly evil, what is scary aobut the book is that given different circumstances Stangl would have been a faceless bureaucrat.
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Summary: Great Work
Review: Wow, it is just amazing to me the way he tries to justify what he was in charge of, the crimes against humanity that he committed. This author does a wonderful job of bring out what was going through this worms mind. The details you get here are very hard to take once you have finished the book and think about it. This is one of the few books that for weeks after I finished it I would continue to think about it and go back to pick it up to refresh my memory. If you are interested in learning about how normal Germans could have committed these acts this should be the first book you pick up. I could not put it down; it really grabs you and does not let go. Even if you are not overly interested in WW 2 or the Holocaust you should read this book, there is no way you will not be griped by it.
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