Synopsis
An inside portrait of the Third Reich by the son of Hans Frank, an executed Nazi war criminal, condemns his father and his Nazi contemporaries in a collection of painful memories that follow the "monsterization" of Hans Frank
Reviews
Frank was seven years old when his father, Dr. Hans Frank, Hitler's governor-general of occupied Poland, was executed at Nuremberg as a Nazi war criminal. Here he bitterly, unforgivingly denounces his father as "a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic," a fawning coward, a pompous actor whose speeches were "the drivel of a numbskull," and a murderer. The author doubts that Dr. Frank's 11th-hour piety in his Nuremberg cell was genuine and regrets the failure of a 1944 assassination attempt. (He is equally hard on his mother, whom he calls "a sleazy fur dealer.") All this, based on prodigious research, is presented in a gleefully manic way that verges on hysteria. While Frank's prose possesses considerable literary power, the nonstop diatribe becomes offensive, then boring. Frank writes for the German magazine Stern.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A bitter and often shocking memoir of Hans Frank, Nazi Governor-General of Poland, by his journalist son. Beginning with the fact, learned apparently from an aunt, that his mother had no orgasm when he was conceived, and proceeding on to a detailed discussion of his father's execution after he was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg, including speculation as to the quality of the sound when his father's neck snapped, Frank gives a chronological account of his father's checkered career. A lawyer with dreams of grandeur, the elder Frank participated in a minor way in Hitler's abortive Putsch in 1923. He caught the Fhrer's eye when he defended some Nazi hooligans, and thereafter his ascent was rapid: Bavarian Minister of Justice; President of the Academy for German Justice; Reich Commissioner for Justice; Minister of the Reich--all while still in his 30s. His first compromise with evil lay in his acquiescence in the murder of S.A. leader Rohm and a number of his associates shortly after Hitler's rise to power. Frank's moral decline after becoming Governor- General of Poland was rapid: ``There is no reason for us to be squeamish when we hear about seventeen thousand people being shot,'' he told one audience. Deeply corrupt--they extorted furs and antiques from wealthy Jews--he and his wife laid themselves open to blackmail by Himmler. The son was seven years old when he had a last view of his father, visiting him in the death cell. Unfortunately, the cruelty of the father is matched by a certain cruelty in the son, and the format of the book, an extended conversation with the elder Frank in which the younger mocks and denounces his father's life, diminishes both the subject and the sympathy we would otherwise have for the son. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This is a translation of Frank's book Der Vater eine Abrechnung (Bertelsmann, c.1987). Abrechnung is a settling of accounts. Frank is a reporter for Stern magazine. He is also the son of Hans Frank, governor general of Poland during World War II, who was later executed for war crimes at Nuremberg. Shadow consists of a monolog from Frank to his father in hell, done mostly with hatred and contempt. The reader is uncomfortable because it is like sitting in on a stranger's therapy. The book occasionally borders on bad taste. Nevertheless, it is an important book. It represents the struggle in Germany that has become more intense since reunification. How does a generation deal with the unspeakable sins of its parents? Either the reaction is "what has it to do with me?" or utter contempt. Frank has chosen the latter; just don't mistake his bile for history. For those who worry about reunification, they may find comfort in this brutal reexamination of German Seele soul. For others, the book is akin to Gunter Grass's "Onion Nightclub" in Tin Drum (1962), where people went after the war to peel an onion and cry. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
- Randall L. Schroeder, Augustana Coll., Rock Is land, Ill.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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