The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid

Author:Yishai Sarid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Israeli fiction;Israeli novels;Holocaust scholar;Holocaust novels;Holocaust fiction;books about the Holocaust;Nazi death camps;Poland;Yad Vashem;Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum;Jerusalem;concentration camps;Auschwitz;Treblinka;Warsaw;death camp;Jews and Germans;Israelis and Germans;modern Jewish fiction;contemporary Jewish fiction;Israeli novelists;Jewish authors;Israeli authors;Holocaust Memorial;the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations;Warsaw Cemetery;Majdanek;Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva;Birkenau;Sonderkommando;Sobibor Extermination Camp;Belzec camp;Jewish slaves;Nazis;Kanada Warehouse;Final Solution;Auschwitz Museum;Righteous Among the Nations;kapo;Judenrat;Arbeit Macht Frei;Chelmno;Doctor Mengele;Nuremberg
Publisher: Restless Books
Published: 2020-08-13T23:05:36+00:00

Another question arrived from the editor: why did I need such a long, practically glorifying description of Reinhard Heydrich, which did not directly contribute to the subject of my research—the matter of unity and difference in the extermination mechanism in Final Solution camps?

I had a clear answer to that and was surprised an editor employed by you would even ask such a thing. Let’s put aside the fact that Heydrich was the operations officer of the Final Solution and the originator of the Wannsee Conference. Isn’t it enough that Operation Reinhard, which utilized the camps in Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, and which the book depicts at length, was named after him?

This was my answer to the editor, but he wouldn’t let go. Why, then, he persisted, was there a need to describe the beauty of the murderer and his fine manners, which had captivated the Führer’s heart; his athletic abilities, and the fact that he had been a fighter pilot during the offensive on the Russian front, along with an official image of him in SS uniform? And why was it important to point out his courage in riding alone with his driver in a Mercedes with the roof lowered, allowing fighters of the Czech underground to assassinate him, and his slow death after a bit of fabric made of horsehair penetrated the gunshot wound in his belly, creating septicemia that caused his death? The editor marked whole paragraphs to be slated for cutting.

He’s got a point, I thought. He was right. I was looking for heroes to connect the events, and finding them on the German side. Loathsome heroes, but heroes nonetheless. Had they completed their mission and won the war, humanity would have exalted them, building monuments in their honor, naming garden cities in the east, stadiums, and concert halls after them. No one would have been digging through sites of human waste in the forests, which would be forever erased from our memories.

To test my hypothesis, and before answering the editor again, I decided to run an experiment. I presented the next youth group I’d guided with a picture of Heydrich at his prime, in official uniform. I Photoshopped his swastikas off but left the other decorations and badges. I didn’t tell them who the man in the picture was, and asked that if one of them happened to recognize him, to keep it to themselves. I asked the kids what they thought of this man.

“Serious,” said one girl. “Level-headed,” said another. “Hot,” someone giggled in the back. “A man who knows what he wants,” said a boy. “A man with a vision.” “Strong.”

The experiment’s results were clear. That’s why we’d forgiven them so quickly, and that is the danger in the memory virus we injected into these children’s bodies. I had it too. I demanded that the editor leave the chapter untouched. I told him it was important.

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