One of the most brutal and harrowing books I’ve read…

but it has to be read…

Think I’m shell shocked today

I just don’t put myself through reading or watching things like that anymore. I feel like I know enough about the horrors in the world. I’ve studied the Holocaust and many other horrific things growing up, absorbed more in newspapers, seen enough films now, read enough books.

There’s enough grim happening right now, that reading things like that just seems like self-flagellation. It’s important we know, understand what happened. But I need to focus on more joyful things these days.

Yeah – why would you read a book like that?

DrJ – Member

Yeah – why would you read a book like that?

why wouldn’t you read a book like that ?

Yeah – why would you read a book like that?

“Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”

I’m by nature extremely squeamish, but it’s only by reading some of the first hand testimony that you can understand the true horror. Obviously, if you feel you’ve read/learnt enough, then I can see why you wouldn’t choose to read more.

Despite all these lessons of history, we don’t seem to have got any better at learning how to prevent it happening again though.

I’m with you unfitgeezer. I understand where the others are coming from, but I really do think that such horrors are worth wrestling with. Reading a book like that will be psychologically quite different to gawking at those sickening videos being posted up by the devils of Daesh, and can engender real compassion once the shock wears off.

I haven’t read the book, and don’t know if I could handle it, but I’m on your side when it comes to saying that it will be something worth engaging with.

I still remember reading The Scourge of the Swastika when I was at school (more than 40 years ago) pretty gruesome stuff.

Yeah – why would you read a book like that?
“Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”

And those that do learn from the past repeat it anyway.

unfitgeezer – Member
DrJ – Member
Yeah – why would you read a book like that?
why wouldn’t you read a book like that ?
avdave2 – Member
Yeah – why would you read a book like that?
“Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”

At going on 62 years of age, I’m more than a little bit aware of the atrocities carried out by not only the Nazis, but the Japanese in the Far East, (my late dad having been a POW in Changi), as a result I really don’t feel that I have any need to read any more about that part of world history.

OP if you haven’t already you should read Primo Levi. If This Is A Man is his account of his time in Auschwitz, it’s an incredible work, absolutely essential.

At going on 62 years of age, I’m more than a little bit aware of the atrocities carried out by not only the Nazis, but the Japanese in the Far East, (my late dad having been a POW in Changi), as a result I really don’t feel that I have any need to read any more about that part of world history.

That’s fine, but it doesn’t follow that nobody should read about it, does it?

I assume from the use of the word Sonderkommando in the title and my lack of familiarity with the book that the author was a prisoner who had to take the awful decision whether to ‘collaborate’ (loosely defined) or be killed on the spot.

I have read things about the camps that have very nearly made me vomit and have definitely had to put the odd book down for a while as I couldn’t carry on reading.

It is important that such things are still highlighted as future generations need to know what happened and why it was allowed to happen.

I still remember seeing the ‘Genocide’ episode of the World At War when I was about nine or ten. It made such a mark on me that I can still remember how I felt my stomach knot up. I was watching it with my Dad – I don’t know if he intended me to see it, or whether it was a click of the fingers decision just to leave it on the TV. It certainly brought some context to the ‘Commando’ comics I was reading at the time and the pow! wham! kaboom! bullshit they were full of.

at the age of 8 i went to Belsen… one of the most harrowing places i have ever been to. 30 years later i still vividly remember the pictures and reading the statements on the displays. worst of all is the general feeling of the place. the atmosphere. unless you have been there it is really hard to verbalise. the area is just quiet, no birds, no insects, nothing. almost as if nothing wants to be there… my ex brother in law’s granddad was the first british medic through the doors at Belsen, he still had night mares about it till the day he died. awfull

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it

I think most people are quite aware of what happened. By getting closer to the horror by reading a first person account like this, you aren’t necessarily leaning more, you’re feeling more.
Just because you wouldn’t read it, it doesn’t mean you care any less and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re any more likely to commit genocide than someone who has.

As others have said, I would never suggest nobody reads about the holocaust or any other horrors in the world. I merely have the sense that I know enough about some of these horrors, I’ve felt enough, and any more is actually just a way of hurting me, upsetting me. That’s all.

I remember when I first became a support worker, up in Glasgow this was, learning about the institutions that people with learning difficulties were trapped in in the past,!and the inhumane treatment they were forced to endure. It was important to know about these things as I began my training to be a support worker: to learn how to empower individuals, not belittle them. It was very powerful, upsetting stuff. Some time later, I supported a woman who had been taken away from her mother, and installed in an institution for the next 40 years. She was 92 when I met her, and she had developed learning difficulties through neglect and, I would argue, torture.

I mention all this to say that my heart bends in all sorts of ways at the horrors of the world, and I try to be kind to myself now in my spare time and read of less agonising things!

Phew that was long winded, sorry!

OP if you haven’t already you should read Primo Levi. If This Is A Man is his account of his time in Auschwitz, it’s an incredible work, absolutely essential.

This. It is a strangely uplifting book especially when followed by the sequel The Truce. Also excellent is If Not Now When? Although it is fictionalised.