A Small Town Near Auschwitz, by Mary Fulbrook

A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust by Mary Fulbrook

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I liked this book but just didn't love it. The author provides a great deal of good historical information about the role of local government officials in clearing a town -- just miles from the gates of Auschwitz -- of its Jewish population. Of course, the process didn't begin with the cattle cars, but with restrictions on movement and employment, the requisition of Jewish-owned homes for ethnic German families, and ghettoization. And I think here lies one of the book's central strengths: portraying how a gradual process based on antisemitism allowed minor functionaries to serve as the cogs in the wheels of the Final Solution while being barely aware of what the Reich's endgame would be. Not only were Hitler and company thus able to use, as the author calls them, "ordinary Nazis" who might have been a little more squeamish about genocide, but later on, the frog-boiling nature of the events made it easier for these ordinary Nazis to lie to investigators, to their families, and to themselves about the roles they played and what they knew about the Holocaust at what point in the timeline of events.



View all my reviews

Finally, a breath

In the past month and a half, I have put my casa on the market, moved into a second-floor apartment, and sold said casa. I have done almost no reading, because most of my books are still in boxes, and I didn't want to risk losing a library book in the confusion (still looking for our potholders). But on the happy side, I have cash to spare again, which resolves all sorts of other tensions, so the world is looking up for the first time in ages.

Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story by Michelle Paver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One of my favorite settings for horror is the Arctic (or Antarctica, I suppose) when the sun sets for months. When the light of day usually brings some measure of safety, what do you do when day won't come for a very long time? Paver uses it well for this book about several young men performing scientific research and seeking adventure in the islands at the top of the world just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Among the book's strengths is the ambiguity of the happenings: The actors are well aware of how the Arctic can affect men's minds, so until almost the very end they're not sure how to react to their experiences. Is it all in their heads, or did they see what they think they saw? A good read for a cold winter night.




View all my reviews