Amimals in Wolve’s Clothing
This book left me devastated. After reading the last page I still felt the book around me and could not leave it. So I did a cyber flick-back through the book to see my highlights, and was surprised to see that I could see not only what I had highlighted, but the highlights of other the other Kindle readers as well. And not only was I surprised at this discovery, but at the fact that what I had highlighted had been highlighted by the others.

"They turned into wolves and devastated cemeteries at night. But however much they tried to appear like wolves, they were not animals. It was not just a question of what they did and said, but also of what they had to keep silent about."

- Thoughts of the protagonist after spending an evening with young Nazis.

In "The Death of the Adversary" the "adversary" and his followers are not named. The adversary is merely referred to as "B", and his followers as his followers. Similarly the central character is not labeled by himself as Jewish. Merely as "other".

And so when we read of him being outcast by the other children when he was very young, and about how his mother takes him by the hand to lead him back to the children to ask them to please play with him, the effect is even sadder than it would have been, had its circumstance been explicit. 'There,' my mother said, and tried to loosen her stern, serious face into a smile. 'He's a child like you. You are all children, play with one another."

For some reason, perhaps because I had never completely comprehended the real horror of it before - the effect of the persecution of the Jewish children in Germany, Poland, Czech ...., I was struck by this scene, where the child feels only humiliation and anxiety when the children turn reluctantly to play with him. His short time with them is filled with his anxiety and their cruelty.

"My former pleasure in playing games was dampened by the constant fear that I might be excluded."

Sadder even than when "they took the old people away.
My father carried his rucksack on his shoulders.
My mother wept.
I shall never see them again."

Yes, I've read The Diary of Anne Frank, and seen "The Pawnbroker". I've read and seen countless other novels and films set in Nazi-occupied Europe. But for some reason I'd never looked upon the particular tragedy of the effects of persecution on children.

Anne Frank was a child. Only ever a child. But Anne retained her sense of joy and hope. The child Keilson describes is a sad little boy and one's heart goes out to him, but it goes to him without hope.

In Wikipedia I read that Keilson, " is a Jewish German/Dutch novelist, poet, psychoanalyst, and child psychologist who wrote about traumas relating to what happened in Europe during WWII. In particular, he worked with traumatized orphans."

What else can one say? Oh yes, there's this -

Hans Keilson is a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor. "The Death of the Adversary" is autobiographical.

Read it! The ( )

Samenvatting:
Dit is het verhaal van een jongeman in een niet nader genoemd land. Hij behoort tot een gemeenschap die met vernietiging wordt bedreigd door een zekere B. Al haat en vreest hij deze B., toch probeert hij zich in zijn tegenstander te verplaatsen. Hij onderneemt zelfs risicovolle pogingen om hem in het echt te ontmoeten. De jongen raakt zo gefascineerd door B. dat hij zijn eigen bestaan alleen kan definiëren in relatie tot zijn tegenstander. Door zijn ambivalente houding jegens B. wordt hij, een tweederangsburger in de maatschappij, nu ook in eigen kring een buitenstaander. IN DE BAN VAN DE TEGENSTANDER is een fascinerende analyse van de symbiose tussen vervolger en vervolgde, en bevat unieke inzichten over de grootste tragedie van de twintigste eeuw.
Recensie(s):
Deze verhuld autobiografische roman van een op tijd gevluchte Duits/joodse man beschrijft dubbelzinnige persoonlijke gevoelens jegens Hitler: aan 'de vijand' meent de ik zijn eigen identiteit te ontlenen en daardoor komt hij te laat in verzet. Dit boek van Keilson (1909-2011) kan tot de Exilliteratur gerekend worden. Een eerdere druk (1959) was snel vergeten, later kwam het weer bovendrijven op de golven van het succes van Etty Hillesum, en een paar jaar geleden werd het door een juichende recensie in de New York Times zelfs een bestseller. Deze puur psychologische roman lijkt op grond van ervaringen van een persoon geen algemene verklaring te bieden voor de passieve houding van vele joden tegenover het opkomend nationaal-socialisme, maar legt wel een beangstigend psychisch mechanisme bloot: de neiging om angst te verdringen via een objectiverende, 'belangstellende' beschouwing van wat die angst veroorzaakt. Het boek geeft diep psychologisch inzicht in de complexe verhouding beul-slachtoffer. Normale druk.

2.5 stars, a bit disappointing: The Death of the Adversary is a first-person narrative told by a man who describes his hatred for an enemy, known as B, who sounds a lot like Adolf Hitler. The book combines that sort of schematicness with some very tense, vivid scenes that present the narrator with adversaries who are his acquaintances. The novel's strength is Keilson's tremendous understanding of human psychology.

(There's more on my blog, here. ( )

So utterly German and psychoanalytic that it was almost unreadable BUT was reading it for class so pushed thru. A portrait of the internal vacillations of a German Jew during the rise of Hitler, the narrator manages to delude himself for most of the book. He finally realizes however that it's not an academic exercise that Hitler accuses the Jews of this, that and everything. They're not merely friendly adversaries, they're enemies. Perhaps many people felt, like this writer, that it couldn't be happening. A very grim read. ( )

Done.

Life's too short to read Socratic dialogues disguised as psychological first-person narratives, wherein said first-person has total recall about every conversation he's ever had.