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Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

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I read this book after devouring Gitta Sereny's wonderful biography on Nazi Armaments Minister, Albert Speer. This offering is superior to anything else on the Holocaust, bar none. Sereny spent many hours interviewing the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl. He reveals in dispassionate tones the horrors of this death camp: the subterfuge to confuse those arriving to the camp, the fake train station, the beautiful gardens... it's almost surreal to read this man's words. More disquieting is that Stangl appears to be rather normal, though obviously a psychopath since the concept of guilt is alien to him. He loved his wife, was a devoted father and was an attractive personality, yet he was involved in monstrous crimes.

Sereny also interviews Jews who survived Treblinka by working in the "clothes factory," and she also interviews some of the S.S. guards who presided over this horrific complex. But the heart and soul of the book is Stangl, whom she interviewed while he was in a German prison in 1972. When she asked him, "When you saw children about to be gassed, did you think of your own children?" Stangl vacantly looked away and said mutely, "I don't know."

This book should be required reading for those who deny the Holocaust or seek to make excuses for Nazi genocide. Sereny is a masterful writer and every word of this book is gripping. This is not a product to skim haphazardly, it's as engrossing as anything ever written about genocide in the 20th century. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

The genius behind the choice for this book's title revolves around what for me, as well as for many other students of the Holocaust, is the central question the phenomenon of organized mass murder inevitably raises; how could it be true that ordinary men are capable of such unspeakable horror on such an unimaginable scale, willing to become enthusiastic participants in the ritualistic murder of millions of their fellow human beings. If one is honest, he or she begins to raise some very disturbing questions about just what kind of a biological organism we are part of, ourselves included as un-indicted co-conspirators by way of the murder we hold somewhere in our own hearts.

Yet, even if you grant me the kindness of agreeing with my supposition, it still does not explain how such men as the individual profiled in this book, Herr Franz Stangl, the one-time commander of the death camp at Treblinka, could manage to swing his body out of bed every day for the decades since he was captured by the Allies and the war ended for him. His personal testimony shows once more how the subtle political use of language and the countless attempts to justify themselves through euphemistic references to the so-called "Jewish problem" seems to aid such individuals in playing a kind of psychological hide-and seek with themselves by aligning their actions with the purposes and goals of Germany during the war. And yet, quite poignantly the interview with Stangl also illustrates how vain and hopeless such efforts to blithely paper over the past really are. Somewhere in the darkness of one's own soul an individual knows all he is guilty of. Or so we would suppose.

So what we have in this thoughtful and penetrating book is a glimpse into the demon's eye, and find that perhaps Hannah Arendt was right when she said it was somehow too banal and trite to be believed or trusted. In truth, just as the author contends, the only way out of the searing heat of the conscience's cauldron is to face the truth and admit as best we can our part in it. Indeed, in this work she bravely illustrates, through Commander Stangl, how one's personal choices change us, often in most frightening ways. Like Stangl, we must all go bravely into the darkness to find the truth that will indeed set us free. In this sense the author's use of so many anecdotal situations is instructive, illustrating just how wide the gate to hell and damnation is, through a variety of variously disguised and decorated entrances. In this regard, I particularly enjoyed her rather erudite argument condemning the indifference and cupidity of both Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church regarding their studied and sustained political and ethical indifference to the continuing operation of the death camps.

In summary, this book provides the reader with an opportunity to be transported to a wasteland where evil stands alone and unafraid in the cold light of day, where too much talk and too little compassion, too much self-serving cowardice and too few examples of individual courage co-exist side by side, and where you can have an opportunity to listen as all of a lifetime of careful rationalization and intellectual compartmentalizing come crashing down, as Stangl finally comes to terms with the monstrous aspects of his own tortured soul. This is a memorable book, one that bears careful reading and a good bit of independent thought, but one I can heartily recommend.

There is a moment in this book about Franz Stangl, the commandant of the death camp Treblinka, in which his wife, who is visiting, learned what the camp is doing. She rushed out to meet him on his way home from "work". "I said, 'I know what you are doing in Sobibor. My God, how can they? What are you doing in this? What is your part in it?' Her husband answered, 'Look, little one, please calm down, please. You must believe me. I have nothing to do with any of this.' I said, 'How can you be there and have nothing to do with it?' And he answered, 'My work is purely administrative ....' 'You mean you don't see it happen?' I asked. 'Oh, yes,' he answered. 'I see it. But I don't do anything to anybody.'"

Gitta Sereny, who may be the world's best interviewer, sat down with Franz Stangl over a long period of time while he was in prison. She interviewed him, Frau Stangl, their friends, relatives, those who finally tracked him down after the war, and survivors of the camps. She is above all patient. She listens. Stangl's story is a familiar one, and not just in Nazi Germany. We see and hear frequently only what we want to see and hear. We remember what is convenient to remember. As I write this, the US press is aglow with reports and opinions regarding the story that the former Senator Kerry has admitted killing civilians in Vietnam. Surprise and shock, as if we were hearing such a report for the first time. As if we aren't capable of the same. As if we are always simply doing our job, as if doing our job were a virtue and a shield against responsibility for evil. Yes, 30,000 children die of hunger every day. Yes, the clothes I'm wearing were manufactured by a ten year old working fourteen hour days. Yes, my SUV is helping destroy life on earth. Yes, what I do today is making the world unlivable for my grandchildren. Yes, I see it. But I'm not doing anything to anybody.

In the end, Stangl admits. "But I was there. So yes, in reality I share the guilt .... Because my guilt ... my guilt ... only now in these talks ... now that I have talked about it all for the first time .... My guilt is that I am still here. That is my guilt. I should have died. That was my guilt." He died nineteen hours later of heart failure.

Sereny takes us into something much like Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". But here, through her skill, there is a realization, too late and too little for Stangl and his victims. We, however, still have time. This may be a hopeful book.

You will arrive at this book after Trevor-Roper, Speer, Shirer, Bullock, Churchill, Gilbert, Irving, Ambrose and all the rest; but it is not that type of history.

First of all ignore the Nazis marketing; the stark red, black and white cover with the obligatory swastika and the obligatory gothic font; also ignore the obligatory Elie Wiesel imprimatur on the back cover. They tell you nothing of what is inside.

Ms. Sereny is primarily an interviewer; in her book "Into That Darkness" she produces a biography of Franz Stangl, Kommandant of the Triblinka extermination Camp in central Poland in 1943. For most of us he and his deathcamp rank at the bottom if not define human atrocity. Ms. Sereny talks to Stangl not a journalist or reporter but as a therapist, and for Stangl this is both the first time and the last time "I never talked to anyone like this"; he dies hours afterwards.

Her picture of Stangl is of a man struggling with his own past behavior, so conflicted in his inability to reconcile his personal concessions; he has developed into two men. One in continuous battle with the other, irreconcilable in their differences, both authors of the same criminal acts from inside one mind. We see both Herr Stangls parse, compartmentalize, excuse, avoid, dodge, stonewall and counter-accuse in a twisted effort to find a logic that will allow them to inhabit that one mind.

Just that Stangl is twisted in conflict at all means that there was in him a spark of recognition of both good and evil as separate things. Moral and immoral, criminal and civil, humane and inhumane; that spark of conscience still glows enough to allow a dim and tardy discrimination. That faint light surrounded by all that darkness is what tears him into two personalities; its the only way he can reconcile the behavior of both; its the only thing that keeps him from becoming an animal. Ms. Sereny finds that animal and turns its slowly in that dim light and destroys both the Stangls.

A third of this book hangs the heavy cloak of complicity squarely on the shoulders of the Vatican. She is not too kind to Simon Wiesenthal either.

Put this book up on your shelf next to Arendt.

This book's title and cover lead one to believe that the reader will read stories of heroic people sheltering Jews in their homes, or anecdotes from survivors of Auschwitz. Indeed we do hear from survivors of death-camps, but only to corroborate the central piece of the book: the author's talk with Franz Stangl. This book is a fresh look at the Holocaust - through the eyes of the persecutors. This approach is captivating throughout, and adding to the intrigue is the depth to which the author and Stangl converse. Here is a man who is taking full advantage of the opportunity to bare his soul and try to lift the weight of 900,000 souls off his shoulders. He is trying to finally come to grips with the horrors that went on under his control. At times we see a man as helpless as the prisoners he controlled. Other times, Stangl is unapologetic. In the course of the talks, he shows readers what Treblinka was like for those forced to live through it. This new look at the Holocaust is fascinating throughout. No account of anything, especially such a vast tragedy as the Nazi's Final Solution, ought to be complete without hearing about life on both sides of the trenches.

This book looks at a man many would disregard. Rather than dismissing him as a monster, and refusing to consider what he might have in common with ordinary humans, the author takes him seriously as an individual, as a man. She doesn't justify him or make excuses for him. But we will only hurt ourselves if we refuse to look honestly at evil in the world, and in ourselves.

Besides this, the book is both excellent journalism and excellent history. It fills a crucial gap in the history of the holocaust, not only for those who would like to compile facts but for those who would like to understand how the horrors came about.

Often, the most frightening--and courageous--action we can take is to confront the truth about ourselves. Through Franz Stangl, commandant of the Nazis' Treblinka death camp, author Gitta Sereny reveals how the choices we make in our lives inevitably, and sometimes mercilessly, change us. And she shows us that the only way we can be at peace is to accept responsibility for them.

Sereny's is no mere biography of Stangl; instead, his life becomes the point of departure for a complex look at Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans (and Austrians, like Stangl), the workings of Treblinka, the escape and pursuit of Stangl after the war's end, and the Catholic Church's complicity in aiding Nazi war criminals. On this last subject, readers will especially appreciate Sereny's thoughtful and scholarly approach, as well as her persuasive conclusions regarding Pope Pius XII's curiously ambivalent behavior at the peak of the death camps' operations. Compare Sereny's analysis with the recent Vatican apology (of sorts), and judge for yourself which is the more credible account.

Throughout the book, Sereny manages to keep the focus on individuals and still retain the vast scope necessary to treat the Holocaust as a historical event. Stangl himself is presented as an ordinary man who made his Faustian pact and tried, like so many former prisoners of the camps, to move on and repress his feelings without processing them. His interviews with Sereny were ultimately as cathartic as they were therapeutic, and he died soon after their last meeting.

The impression we are left with at the end of "Into That Darkness" is one of tragedy as well as horror, for unlike a Goebbels or a Himmler or an Eichmann, Stangl could have been one of us. Sereny makes no apologies for Stangl; quite the contrary. But that's what makes this particular truth so hard to face.

Gita Sereny's "Into the Darkness" is based on a series of interviews with former Treblinka extermination camp commander Franz Stangl, his family and associates. It reports, beyond reproach, on the machinery of extermination, justification, and cover up of the Holocaust.

The book seek to answer the question how an ordinary citizen like Franz Stangl can raise to the complicity in unimaginable horror and still live with himself for many years after that. Mrs. Sereny shows how deeply ingrained the moral fiber of being is in the soul after all, how important is it in order to live in peace with oneself, and how difficult is the struggle of repression, justification and denial is for one guilty. How cunning evil is in diffusing its scope beyond recognition of individual responsibility; and how at the end in the darkest recesses of his soul the guilty knows and finally has courage to say the truth. How adapt the human soul is in building barriers, masks and ritual to hide the ugliness and suffering.

Without taking sides, in cool and non-judgmental journalistic style, narrative is a masterpiece of it genre. Difficult book to read no doubt, because the magnitude of horror is not masked by petty emotion. This book does not offer any answers, any solution, it just sadly reports on what went on.

I have often wondered how the Holocaust could have taken place. How could millions of people have been killed on such a huge scale? In her book, Gitta Sereny helps to find some of the answers to that question. In 1971, she had the unique opportunity to interview Franz Stangl, one of the commanders of the Nazi extermination camps in Poland. The interviews took place over several weeks, and lasted 70 hours. The interviews form the basis of the book, and a deeper understanding of Franz Stangl and the Holocaust. From the book, we learn that evil does not appear all at once; but that it grows over a period of time; like a journey into an ever deepening darkness. In an almost step by step process, Franz Stangl was drawn deeper and deeper into the darkness, until he could become the commander of a place where 900,000 people were murdered. One of the most terrifying realizations from the book, is the thought of how easy it can be to descend into that darkness. It is something that could happen to so many of us, as we keep going on with our lives; even though we are doing things that we know in our hearts are wrong. By the end of the book, many illusions about the Holocaust have been stripped away, and Franz Stangl finally comes face to face with himself and his own personal responsibility. The moments that are described then, are some of the most haunting and memorable that I have ever read. The most important message from the book, is that we must take responsibility for our own actions; and for each other. This is one of the best books ever written about the Holocaust, and it is highly recommended.

An extraordinary work. Not simply an examination of a Nazi death-camp, nor a mere analysis of those who operated them, but a heart-stopping journey into the darkest of humanity's depths. Gita Sereny embarked on a journalist's expedition to reveal the monster that lived within one such death-camp commander and sweeps the reader along on an unexpected voyage to a far greater horror: that the capacity for an atrocity as monsterous as the "final solution" cannot be comfortably shrugged off as a singular abberration of Nazi Germany -- by finding the man in the monster, it is clear that such a monster could lurk in us all. Be prepared for a voyage of self-revelation: not only for the ostensible subject of the book and the author, but ultimately for the reader. It is a story of an unimaginable crime perpetrated by steps so incremental that it becomes a little clearer how so many allowed themselves to be seduced into the performance of the unthinkable. No other book I have read has left me in tears on a public street car. It is an unforgetable read; you are unlikely to emerge untouched.