I can remember neither title nor the name of the author, but it was published in England some time during the 1950s It was a slim book with one of those greyish brown rexine library bindings – no dust jacket as an aid to memory
It told the whole story of the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis – from Kristellnacht to the liberation of the camps. Although I remember it as a factual book, I think it may have been a kind of docu-novel, possibly telling it as the story of twin sisters
I was very nervous about reading it, not because I thought it would be too shocking – it would not be on the library shelves if it were deemed to be that - & anyway the librarian would have refused to issue it to me if she thought it unsuitable
I cannot remember a time when I did not know something about the Holocaust, though I do not remember any specific lessons. Our parents certainly knew, & I think by then I had seen film footage of the liberation of the camps or heard one of the BBC radio broadcasts replayed
It was a given that Hitler & his works were evil. But I was old enough to have been thinking about ‘the problem of evil’. My concern was – if I read the book & in some sense understood evil, would that very understanding make me evil too? Or at the least, make it more possible for me to fall into evil ways?
***
I had a similar experience not much more than a decade later when I came across a paper back edition of Emlyn Williams book on the Moors Murderers, Brady & Hindley, when I was abroad on a working trip. Although I was a fan of true crime (in the days before serial killer & post mortem porn), I did not know if I could stomach this one. I bought a copy anyway, but decided to wait until I was safely home before reading it
I was curiously dissatisfied by it. It gave a lot of detail about when & where; I skipped any bits about the how – as a mother myself by then, I just did not need to know – but nothing which came near to telling me why
I was curiously dissatisfied by it. It gave a lot of detail about when & where; I skipped any bits about the how – as a mother myself by then, I just did not need to know – but nothing which came near to telling me why
***
Brady had, among other things, introduced Hindley to the works of the Marquis de Sade
By this time I had read them myself, in Canada at the end of the 1960s when under the influence of First Amendment judgements works which would have been kept well away from ‘decent people’ were available in every bookshop
I was upset when my husband brought a copy of the collected works home; Why would you want to read something like that?
Because if you do not know what human beings are capable of, you cannot be ready to deal with them
So I read the books, or at least quite a lot of them
Again I was slightly puzzled by my almost non-shocked reaction. It seemed more like a boring instruction manual for some deeply boring hobby or activity. Which fails to answer the question: Why would I want to do that?
By this time I had read them myself, in Canada at the end of the 1960s when under the influence of First Amendment judgements works which would have been kept well away from ‘decent people’ were available in every bookshop
I was upset when my husband brought a copy of the collected works home; Why would you want to read something like that?
Because if you do not know what human beings are capable of, you cannot be ready to deal with them
So I read the books, or at least quite a lot of them
Again I was slightly puzzled by my almost non-shocked reaction. It seemed more like a boring instruction manual for some deeply boring hobby or activity. Which fails to answer the question: Why would I want to do that?
To be continued
