The Himmler Brothers

ISBN-13: 9780330448147 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 333 str.

Katrin Himmler

Opis

Once upon a time the Himmlers were just a normal German familymiddle-class, hard-working, well-educated. There were three brothers, Gebhart, Heinrich, and Ernst. Heinrich grew up to become the head of Hitler s SS, mastermind of the concentration camp system, and chief perpetrator of the Holocaust. When Katrin Himmler, Heinrich s great-niece, was 15, one of her classmates asked during a history lesson if she was related to "the" Himmler. "Yes," she stammered, at which there was a deathly hush in the classroom and the teacher, embarrassed and unsure, quickly moved the lesson on. As she grew older, Katrin gave her family history a wide berth, but married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto and with a young, half-Jewish son, she realized that she could not evade the past so easily. Katrin Himmler s cool but meticulous examination of the Himmler story revealsin all its dark complexitythe gulf between the "normality" of bourgeois family life and the horrors perpetrated by one member. Amore nuanced portrait of Heinrich himself emergesnot a lone evil executioner, but a middle-class family man, loved and fully supported by his respectable German family."

O autorze

Himmler, Katrin
Katrin Himmler is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Gestapo and leading organiser of the Holocaust. She was born in 1967.