Into That Darkness

[burgerhaus]

Hello Friends,
It looks as if I'm the first one to enter this thread. Well, here goes. I have just finished reading INTO THAT DARKNESS by Gitta SERENY. This book is based on many interviews by the author of Franz Stangl (commandant at Treblinka) while serving his life prison sentence. She includes many other interviews with his family members, survivors of the camp, members of the uprising, and others. What I liked about this book was her easy-toread literary style and her poignant questions with regard to his feelings of any guilt in his service to the Reich. She has also authored other books on this subject the best of which are her interviews with Albert Speer. The book has few photos but offers insight into the thinking of the man and also his benevolence toward the work-jews under him. Her interviews of the work-jews were quite interesting as well. I was struck by ther brutal honesty especially when one in particular expressed his joy when the doomed from the west were brought in because of all their belongings they brought(especially food) and their disappointment when victims were brought from the East who more often than not had only the clothes on their back. I will end my review here. Amazon has it for less than $10 in paperback. A worhty read.
3 thumbs up
Robert L. Burger
P.S. I feel like I'm back in College.

[McCulloh]

Gitta was brilliant. Her book on Speer was amazing-rich, detailed and erudite. It's the one all the others answer.
I read "Into That Darkness" during Bosnia. It is, to my mind, infinetely better at expalining via parables the banality of evil than Arendts' book on Eichmann. The descriptions of the Allgemeine personnell really resonated with me when I later interviewed Serbian and Croation militiamen.
I was privel.>dged to meet her in 1987 and had a long chat about Speer, especially his in-depth interview with Phil Donahue in which he detailed a lot of gossip about "the inner circle". Interestingly, she later ran afoul of "Peter Stahl"-and David Irving. "Peter Stahl" was in my neck of the woods a few years ago and royally angered many of the locals. What is interesting though is how she got taken in by his Holocaust letter forgeries-some of which apparently are being reviewed at the Holocaust museum now as a potential academic topic.

[burgerhaus]

Gitta was brilliant. Her book on Speer was amazing-rich, detailed and erudite. It's the one all the others answer.
I read "Into That Darkness" during Bosnia. It is, to my mind, infinetely better at expalining via parables the banality of evil than Arendts' book on Eichmann. The descriptions of the Allgemeine personnell really resonated with me when I later interviewed Serbian and Croation militiamen.
I was privel.>dged to meet her in 1987 and had a long chat about Speer, especially his in-depth interview with Phil Donahue in which he detailed a lot of gossip about "the inner circle". Interestingly, she later ran afoul of "Peter Stahl"-and David Irving. "Peter Stahl" was in my neck of the woods a few years ago and royally angered many of the locals. What is interesting though is how she got taken in by his Holocaust letter forgeries-some of which apparently are being reviewed at the Holocaust museum now as a potential academic topic.

Jeff, Would you happen to know of any good titles on Dr. Ley or Von Schirach?? I would have liked to meet Ms. Sereny as well. Of the few times I have seen videos of her being interviewed, she seems like an extremely intelligent and open individual. Thank you Robert

[Bill D.]

I'm certainly in agreement with the thoughts expressed here. I think that "Into That Darkness" is one of the essential books in the english language for attempting to understand the holocaust. Sereny did an incredible job of presenting Franz Stangl as the "ordinary man", which is essentially what he was. He wasn't sadistic or personally cruel; he was given a job to do and he did it. But at the same time the book makes it clear that Stangl was not immune to emotional fallout from what he had done, what he had supervised. Really a great book.

[McCulloh]

Ley and Schirach individually? Not off the top of my head. There have been a number of "biography collections" about the top leaders of the TR and I'm certain somebody (perhaps Whiting) has done an overview of both of these guys-but the best sources of information on them are the interviews and interviewers' perceptions that are written down. Ley always painted himself as half-victim, half-egocentric pompous prat.
Balder was still alive in the 1980s and there are some on this Forum who met him. I never did, but I know people who knew him and his family well.
Oh-and as for the "gossip" that the Pm was about-it was Hitler's sex life!!
Speer told Mike Donahue (of all people) that Eva Braun told him in an unguarded moment that Hitler had no interest in sex, unless she initiated it!
The tid-bits of history!