Holocaust – Gerald Green

I usually like reading Holocaust books because I do not understand yet, how a full nation can become so cruel or indifferent to a Whole people group. And book after book… nothing changes. I mean, I do not understand it yet, but maybe I memorize the little symphtoms that a nation show when it is choosing that way. In this period of great immigration, this faculty can become useful.

Anyway, this novel has been born as a script from the same author, and from the script it maintains the same scenes fastness.

The most interesting parts are the ones dedicated to the nazi Erik Dorf, who did not particularly hate the jews at the beginning, but who at the end becomes one of the most fierce defendor of Holocaust. Is the evil really so banal?
Well, the lost of compassion is gradual, and if you do not stop to think, you cannot notice it.

The same thing can happen to each of us. Somethimes we need to stoop and think.

Der Fall Collini – Ferdinand von Schirach

 

In this period of stressfull worktime, I really needed some fiction to read: I needed to change place and time. So I “went” to Germany with this book.

There is a lawyer who decides to defend Collini, who has killed Hans Meyer, a famous and rich old man. The story is not long: it seems that there is no defence space in this case, because Collini doesn’t want to speak. On the contrary: he admits his fault. But then the lawyer finds out that the victim was his family friend the grandphater of her nice looking nephew (of course she is nice looking…).

Well, at the end, Leinen, the lawyer, manages to find the reason why Collini killed Meyer, and all the situation seems different: of course, Meyer had been a nazi who has killed Collini’s father.

Rather boring.
Above all, I think that I would hardly find a woman more stupid and banal than Johanna, Meyer’s nephew. She speaks max three times through the whole book. She is there just to make some sex with the lawyer. Dephtless at all. Almost invisible. Less than a cliché.

But, like in all book, you always learn something. In this case, the EGOWIG LAW, that, at the end of Sixties, prescribed a lot of nazi crimes. Yes. That’s it. And once the public noticed it, there was nothing else to do, because once a crime is prescribed, you cannot consider it a crime anymore.
Very well. And two days ago was the Memory day, wasn’t it?