The Aftermath

Vikram has been banished from the bedroom but we are inseparable during the evenings.

I am now reading about the aftermath of the war when communications are restored and Henny gets back in touch with her old friends in Berlin. Seth uses the letters he found in the attic of Henny's house in Hendon as his source. She and her family were deeply rooted in the community they lived in and had a close-knit circle of friends. She was engaged to her employer's son.

Obviously, Henny is very preoccupied with the way her mother and sister were treated by this group of people during the run-up to their deportation in 1943. Lola, her sister, was among the last Jews to leave Berlin as her work was considered important but eventually the she and her mother were separated and sent to the death camps. The trail of letters gives a great deal of insight into the pressures put upon the German people living under the Nazis and the moral dilemmas they faced as they struggled to keep their integrity and to survive themselves. Some helped Henny's family more than others. Some had more to lose because of their own dubious ancestry. Henny's fiance married an Aryan and betrayed her to preserve himself. He was himself half Jewish. There are also first-hand descriptions of the deprivations suffered by the Germans in the years after the war ended.

I find all this quite fascinating as it is an extreme version of the moral dilemmas we all face as we go through life. It also shows how difficult it is to condemn another's choices without understanding their situation.

"Two Lives" by Vikram Seth

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!