The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections, Germany, 1938-2001 - Hardcover

Sereny, Gitta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393044289 ISBN 13: 9780393044287

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2001

Synopsis

In this memoir spanning more than fifty years, Gitta Sereny confronts Germany's troubled past, investigating the dark moments in the country's history as well as chronicling how her life has been repeatedly linked with that nation's history.
Sereny first encountered the Nazis in 1934, at the age of eleven, when by chance she was taken to a Nuremberg rally, and again four years later when she was in Vienna during the Anschluss. In 1940, she was studying in Paris when the Blitzkrieg overran the Allied army; she became a nurse in a chateau on the Loire in occupied France, looking after abandoned children, until 1942 when, warned that she was about to be arrested, she escaped across the Pyrenees. After the war she worked in Displaced Persons camps for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in occupied Germany.
When Sereny became a writer, the Nazi period and its lasting impact on Germany not surprisingly became one of her main themes. The Healing Wound gathers together the best of Sereny's writings about Germany over fifty years, exploring the guilt, denials, and deceptions that, in many different ways, the Nazis created. She writes about individuals, many of whom she came to know well, who were deeply involved in the events of the period - among others, Franz Stangl, the Commandant of Treblinka, John Demjanjuk, the alleged Ivan the Terrible, Leni Riefenstahl, Francois Genoud, a Swiss man who loved Hitler, and of course Albert Speer.

About this title

About the Author

Gitta Sereny's previous books include Into That Darkness, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, and most recently Cries Unheard. Born in Vienna, she lives in London.

From Library Journal

Reminiscent of the thoughtful writings of Elie Wiesel and Viktor Frankl, these essays by Austrian-born Sereny (Into That Darkness) read at times like short stories connected by the author's quest to comprehend the phenomenon that was German National Socialism. Sereny was a member of the French resistance during World War II, and when she tells a story whether her own or that of one of the many historical figures she has interviewed the work is compelling and thought-provoking. When she philosophizes, however, as she does in one long section on the effect of Nazism on German youth, the work stalls. The writing would have benefited from simplification; many of the sentences are long and complex and are fractured by a profusion of dashes and commas, which endangers their clarity. Still, Sereny writes with insight, passion, and understanding of Hitler's servants and their lingering impact on Germany today. Highly recommended for academic libraries. Michael F. Russo, Louisiana State Univ. Libs., Baton Rouge
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0393044289
• ISBN 13: 9780393044287
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320