I hardly slept last night.
The last thing I do every night before I turn out the light is read my book. Last night I found it hard to put down. I am currently reading Vikram Seth's novel "Two Lives", in which he narrates the unusual story of his Uncle Shanti and Aunt Henny.
They both had fascinating lives and lived through turbulent times. Henny was a German Jew who came over to England in 1939, while it was still possible for Jews to travel. Last night I was riveted by Seth's description of what would have happened to her mother, Ella, and her sister, Lola, both sensitive, cultured women who were caught up in unimaginable horror. Of all the articles and books I have read about the Holocaust, I think this really brought home to me the gruesome reality. Seth does not dwell particularly on the details of their final ordeal, he just gives an outline of what their fate would have been, but the final description of the scene in the gas chamber is harrowing.
I was also reading yesterday the story of Leni Riefenstahl, the actress and film maker who collaborated with the Nazis and made propaganda films for them but who, herself, may have been Jewish. It is anathema to us now that this horror became normalised, yet it happened in Western Europe within living memory.
Also in the Sunday Times was a fascinating article by Bryan Appleyard describing the Stanford Prison Experiment which demonstrates that perfectly ordinary, well-balanced people can be turned into savage tyrants or cowering victims according to the circumstances in which they find themselves. That it is the situation that allows evil to flourish. That really is chilling!
I find these holocaust deniers totally repugnant.
ReplyDeleteI also go to bed with a book and have been known to stay awake til 3.30am because I am so engrossed.
My present bedtime reading is Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White", which I recommend for its highly soporific properties - it's probably one of the most boring books ever written! Which is odd - given that instalments of it were apparently waited for with bated breath, when it was first serialised in the 19th century. Dickens it is not, however, I am finding!
ReplyDeleteThe splendid A.N. Wilson is recommending (in the Daily Telegraph) that we should all now take up Dante's "Divine Comedy", by the way, and read it word for word. Twenty minutes a day for a month should do it, he says; and our lives will never be the same again.
I'm thinking of giving it a go - I managed Proust after all, so why not Dante?
Tell me more, Beatrice. It sounds interesting.
ReplyDelete