VOLUME 9 NO.4 APRIL 2009 Blfl journal l^^^l ^^^^1 ^ Association of Jewish Refugees Rereading The Reader ernhard Schlink's 1995 illiteracy, but at the price of novel Der Vorleser (the incurring a sentence of life Bterm means someone who imprisonment (the other accused reads aloud to someone else) has get off lightly). The novel then been a huge intemational success, recapitulates the theme of translated into some 39 languages, Vorlesen: Berg sends the topping the New York Times imprisoned Hanna tapes on which bestseller list, and receiving the he has recorded novels and poems ultimate accolade of nomination that he has read aloud, thus by Oprah Winfrey. Sales of The eventually enabling her to leam to Reader will doubtless derive a read. Many years later, he visits fresh boost from the film version, her in prison, and they become which was reviewed in our March reacquainted. By now an old Kate Winslet and David Kross as Hanna Schmitz and Michael Berg issue. The original text of the novel woman, she petitions successfully is markedly superior to the film screenplay that causes her to become a camp guard. for early release, but commits suicide on the by David Hare, whose clunking style and Offered promotion in the Siemens factory eve of freedom. evident lack of familiarity with the Germany where she is working in 1943, she prefers to Schlink depicts his woman camp guard of the 1960s do not do justice to the sparse, leave rather than take a job that would as a human being. He presents us with a cool prose of the book, which is interspersed expose her illiteracy; jobless, she is recruited normal, plausibly flesh-and-blood woman with more reflective and lyrical passages. by the SS. The pattem repeats itself in a who is far removed from such monstrous The reason for this Holocaust (or, more small German university town (identifiably figures as Ilse Koch, the notorious 'Beast of correctly, post-Holocaust) novel's success is Heidelberg) some 15 years later, when she Buchenwald', or Irma Grese, executed in not hard to find: it lies in the acute, meets Michael: offered promotion to an office 1945 for crimes committed at Auschwitz and psychologically and emotionally convincing job, she abandons her existing position as a Bergen-Belsen, or Hermine Braunsteiner portrayal of a teenage boy's affair in the late tram conductor and disappears, with not a Ryan, a camp guard at Majdanek who was 1950s with an older woman who turns out word to the lover whose life she thereby discovered living in New York and whose to have been a concentration camp guard. permanently damages. trial in the 1970s revealed acts of dreadful The boy, Michael Berg, grows up to become Michael goes on to study law. Some years cruelty. the middle-aged man who narrates the later, at a trial of former concentration camp Hanna is her illiteracy apart - an novel; through his narration we are skilfully guards, he is dismayed to recognise Hanna ordinary working-class woman, the course induced to perceive the way in which his among the accused. Unable to read any of of whose life takes her to Auschwitz as a emotional development has been stunted by the documents relating to the trial and the perpetrator, but without conscious intent; his affair with the woman, Hanna Schmitz, charges she is facing, she is ill equipped to she is no deranged psychopath or sadist, but and by her abrapt departure from his life. defend herself. The trial focuses on an the kind of person one might encounter any Reading plays a singular role in their incident at the end of a death march: the day on the street. Professor Bill Niven of relationship: she so enjoys his reading aloud surviving female prisoners were locked Nottingham Trent University has argued, to her that it becomes part of the regular ovemight in a church and, when this caught on the basis of certain surface similarities ritual that precedes their lovemaking. He fire during an air raid, the guards failed to in their stories, that Hanna is modelled on becomes her Vorleser. unlock the doors, leaving the women to bum Ilse Koch, but this overlooks the The novel uses a private, intimate to death. fundamental difference between the two, relationship as the springboard for an Hanna's refusal to betray her illiteracy deriving from the way in which Schlink has analysis of the ever-troubled question of reaches its highpoint in her damaging conceived his character. post-war Germany's relationship with its admission that she was the author of a However, anyone reading Der Vorleser Nazi past. The key to Hanna Schmitz's report on this incident, an admission that is from a Jewish point of view may well have behaviour lies in her shame at her illiteracy. patently false, given that she can neither serious reservations about the novel. As we gradually realise, it is her illiteracy read nor write. Once again she conceals her I continued overleaf \ I AJR JOURNAL APRIL 2009 REKEADI\(, THE READER continued from page I Astonishingly, Schlink contrives to depict principal victim of the former camp guard, our parents' crimes! See how our delicate a Nazi concentration camp guard who is not her Jewish victims during the Holocaust. psyches have been wounded by the after­ condemned to life imprisonment without, One reason why Der Vorleser has proved math of the Holocaust! Oh, the poor things. apparently, ever having committed any so popular with schoolteachers is that their Anthony Grenville major crime. Hanna first worked at students easily identify with Michael and Auschwitz, but we learn almost nothing quickly imderstand how badly he has been AJR leaders in meeting with about what she did there. She then spent damaged emotionally by the affair with Bundestag Vice-President some months at a work camp near Cracow, Hanna. But what of the damage done by where her most sinister activity was to have Hanna to the Jews in her charge, damage young and delicate women prisoners come that would clearly have been of an altogether to her room at night, before they were different order of magnitude? 'selected' to be sent back to Auschwitz and Jews, as victims and survivors, play only gassed; it transpires at her trial that she had a peripheral part in the novel. The two the women read aloud to her - a blow to the Jewish survivors of the fire in the church watching Michael, their unwitting successor, are known only as 'The Mother' and 'The AJR Chairman Andrew Kaufman (sec­ but hardly a serious crime. Daughter', designations that ship them to ond from left) and Directors Gordon Greenfield (right) and Michael On the death march, Hanna's crime, that some extent of their individuality; they Newman recently met with Frau of failing to unlock the doors of the buming remain outside that reahn of human society Petra Pau, Vice President of the Ger­ church, was one of omission rather than within which the narrator moves with some man Bundestag, in London. The meeting provided an opportunity to commission. The women who died there fell measure of easy familiarity, permanently explain the work of the AJR, espe­ victim to an Allied air raid, in a rather stereotyped by their origins and their cially the Homecare programme, for unfortunate parallel to Goebbels's experiences in the camps as representatives which the AJR receives a substantial grant from the Claims Conference, propaganda image of the British and of 'the Other'. The few pages towards the provided by the German Govern­ American air forces as 'terror bombers' end of the book that describe the middle- ment. raining death and destmction on innocent aged Michael's visit to the 'Daughter' in New people in the Reich. Finally, Hanna is plainly York are among the novel's weakest (though innocent of the detail that seals her fate, her better by far than the corresponding passage ANNUAL GENERAL alleged authorship of the report on the of the film). MEETING incident. It would have been more credible The sufferings of the Jews under Nazism ofthe if Hanna and her fellow guards had, for are made to take second place to the emo­ ASSOCIATION OF example, themselves set the church on fire, tional dismption caused to the post-war JEWISH REFUGEES MONDAY 22 JUNE 2009 or if they had callously killed their prisoners generation of Germans by the legacy left 11.00 AM off in some other way. As it is, a former them by the previous generation, a dismp­ at the camp guard emerges almost as the victim tion that cannot begin to compare with the Paul Balint AJR Centre of a miscarriage of justice - a deplorable almost unimaginable scale of the misery 15 Cleve Road, London NW6 piece of unmerited exculpation that is hard caused by the Holocaust. Schlink's depiction Lunch will be served at a cost of £5. to swallow, even in a work of fiction. of the sad plight of Michael Berg's gene­ Space is limited. If you would like to reserve a place for lunch, please call A second cause for unease is the use of ration comes, when set alongside the Head Office on 020 8385 3070 by the Holocaust as a mere backdrop to the Holocaust, perilously close to self-pity, to Monday 8 June 2009. troubled psychological and emotional that narcissistic self-absorption so charac­ Agenda development of a young German growing teristic of post-war Germany's attempts to Annual Report 2008 up in the Adenauer years. Professor Jeremy come to terms with the burden of its recent Hon.