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Werken van Sabine Reichel

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Geboortedatum
1946
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
Germany

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Sabine Reichel was born in Germany shortly after WWII ended, and she spent her youth and young adulthood hating being German and unable to view her parents as moral authorities - traits she says were shared by most Germans of her generation.

I never thought of that. I feel sort of stupid now, because honestly it never occurred to me that the War, and the Holocaust, did this kind of emotional damage to the generation that followed. You know, I thought about guilt and shame, just not these particular ramifications. Actually, Reichel brings up a lot of issues that I hadn't thought about, so I found this book interesting from beginning to end. But a problem: the book is kind of a polemic. Reichel is trying to come to terms with the German national character, trying to understand how things could possibly have gone so wrong, and while I applaud her efforts, I think she is still too angry to get to the truth. She makes a real effort to be fair to her parents, but seriously: she's just too angry. Her dad wasn't a Nazi, never carried a gun, and even worked with the Resistance, so her anger is a little ocnfusing to me.

Also, it's my theory that trying to analyze a "national character" is kind of a waste of time. Reichel ends up convinced that the Germans have a unique reverence for unquestioning obedience to authority; I'm not really buying that, and I think she is stretching for a scapegoat quality that she can blame everything on. Personally, I resonated to a comment that she made and then seemed to abandon, to the effect that until we understand our own liability to become Nazis, given the right circumstances, we can never fend off the demon in the human spirit that brings about these atrocities.
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Gemarkeerd
2chances | Aug 4, 2010 |

Statistieken

Werken
11
Leden
30
Populariteit
#449,942
Waardering
½ 3.6
Besprekingen
1
ISBNs
11
Talen
2