The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History - Rilegato

Himmler, Katrin

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0230529070 ISBN 13: 9780230529076

Casa editrice: Pan Macmillan, 2007

Riassunto

Once upon a time the Himmlers were just a normal German family, middle-class, hard-working, well-educated. There were three brothers, Gebhart, Heinrich, and Ernst. Heinrich grew up to become the head of Hitler’s SS, mastermind of the concentration camp system, and chief perpetrator of the Holocaust. When Katrin Himmler, Heinrich’s great-niece, was 15, one of her schoolmates asked during a history lesson if she was related to the Himmler. "Yes," she stammered, at which there was a deathly hush in the classroom and the teacher, embarrassed and unsure, quickly moved the lesson on. As she grew older, Katrin gave her family history a wide berth, but married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto and with a young, half-Jewish son, she realizes that she cannot evade the past so easily. Katrin Himmler’s cool but meticulous examination of the Himmler story reveals?in all its dark complexity?the gulf between the "normality" of bourgeois family life and the horrors perpetrated by one member and a more nuanced portrait of Heinrich himself emerges?not a lone evil executioner, but a middle-class family man, loved and fully supported by his respectable German family.

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Recensione

It took courage and imagination for Katrin to confront the assumptions and half-truths that had taken root in the family . . . You get a vivid sense of a particular kind of German conservatism and of how, weirdly, it found an outlet in the upstart, part-pagan thuggery of Nazisim . . . The Himmler Brothers raises more questions than it answers, but that doesn't lessen in the slightest my admiration of Katrin Himmler for having written it. --.

One can only admire the bravery of Katrin Himmler . . . In a way, Katrin Himmler's book is not a story about the past, but one about the present. The most interesting details are the ones she gives of her own quest. --.

Katrin Himmler's book is important: in its meticulous detail, we see the enduring truth of the phrase "the banality of evil". It shows how a family from a cultured Munich background could produce the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world and how its other members willingly followed him on a Faustian pact with evil. --Sunday Telegraph

Descrizione del libro

Heinrich Himmler's great-niece offers a unique account of one woman's attempt to deal with her chilling inheritance

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Pan Macmillan
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0230529070
• ISBN 13: 9780230529076
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 334