Customer Reviews

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

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This book mostly contains a collection of previously published pieces written over a thirty-year period. each is given a new introduction and some also update the information. Included in the articles are autobiographical anecdotes about Ms Sereny's event filled life.

It deals with some of the infamous participants of World War II (such as Speer and Stengle of Trablinka) as well as with some of the after effects that the conflict has wrought the world. Also appearing are the stories of those whose lives as members of the Third Reich did not being until after May 1945. The forger of the Hitler diaries (and Sereny's sinister take on them), the man who owns the copyright on "Mein Kampf", and the youth of Germany in the 1960s.

If you have read her other books some material here will be repetitive, however, the collection allows readers to gain a much broader perspective on how the war has shaped and continues to shape our world.

Ms. Sereny is one of the true gifts to the literary world and as each of her books is published I relish the chance to read it. That is what was so disappointing about The Healing Wound: Experiences and Reflections, Germany, 1938-2001. The stated purpose of the book was to discuss the effect of the Nazis and the war on Germans, both during and after the conflict. Whilet the writing is as usual top flight and each of the chapters engrossing, as a whole the book fails in its essential task.

The book is a collection of decades of Ms. Sereny's writing, edited and updated. Two of the chapters are derived from her earlier books on Stangl and Speer, and for those who have read the books, there is very little added. The other chapters are engrossing in their own right. They range from the Nazi's stealing of children to be raised as Aryans, Ms. Sereny's experiences in pre-war Germany, to the falsification of Hitler's diaries, and the trial of John Demjanjuk. What is missing is a universal current that brings together each of the chapters together. At times the book seems to be as much about the United States or Israel as Germany.

When Ms. Sereny does discuss the attitudes of current Germans and the evolutionary process that they have taken part in the discussion is riveting. Focusing on those sections, one firmly believes that there is no comparison between the German that grew up in what was West Germany and the German who lived in Germany in the early 1930's. That whatever else might be said, that the German government and people have taken their recent history to heart with the firm desire to insure that it will not be repeated. This is encouraging given the discussion about the racist problems arising in the former East German states. I only wish that more of the book had been devoted to this subject.

Gitta Sereny is an excellent author. Yes, as mentioned in the other reviews this is a collection of her work. What I enjoyed about this book is that it touches so many different facets of the Third Reich and how it still resonates in society today.

Reading this for someone who is interested in this period is an excellent way to end up going off on different tangents from the mainstream books on the subject. I ended up reading books on what it was like growing up as a child of the Reich. From there I went on to read about the effects of the post-war population movements had on the demographic makeup of Europe. Read it and see what you never thought of before.