Into the Darkness (Darkness #1)

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Stangl's ability to contribute to mass-inhumanity was fueled not by cruelty but by self-deception; he never attended the murders; never even inspected the gas-chambers. He even showed small kindnesses to many prisoners despite knowing that the machine he ran doomed them all.

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Stangl's retelling of his own story, I think, can best be summed up in a quote from Carl Jung: “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”

Into the Darkness

This is a dark taboo story about a couple, not a romance because it doesn't have a HEA. Having read the author's disclaimer and trigger warning I was ready to feed off the toxicity of this couple and the author definitely delivered the toxicity. He stalks her with the intention of killing her but ends up obsessed with her and that's how their story begins. I like how he's not likeable at all and the author does not shy away from how ridiculous he is but rather leans on that and also how he's not redeemable at all! He isn't morally gray, he's downright evil! Also how she is very mentally ill and they're just trauma bonding and finding that something that makes them feel safe enough to share their true selves. While it's not a romance you can definitely see how their characters change due to their relationship and how they'll do literally anything just so they can be the center of each other's world. I could appreciate what was conveyed in the story which is why I gave it 2 stars but I really didn't care for them as individuals or as a couple. As Gitta Sereny learns more about his life she discovers that this man was a loving husband and father who wanted to protect his wife from the brutal reality. She finally learned about what was happening in Sobibor almost by accident. However, Stangl was not a fanatic. He sought, according to his own confessions, to do his job as it should be done. Stangl wants to convince the author that he did not have another choice. The former commandant attempts to shift the blame onto Globocnik, who was his superior and had been responsible for the murder of around three million men, women, and children. Stangl seems to have thought that Globocnik would not allow him to get out. If he had rejected his appointment as commandant of the extermination camps he would have been arrested or even killed. But the truth is no one can say what could have happened to Franz Stangl had he firmly refused to do what he did. Perhaps the definition of a worthy book about the Holocaust is that it leaves you asking more questions than it answers. That, ultimately, it is unsatisfactory. Satisfaction, after all, allows one to move on.

Into the Darkness | Book | Scribe US Into the Darkness | Book | Scribe US

This need to distance himself from the horror showed during the interviews. Stangl would slip into "the popular vernacular of his childhood whenever he had to deal with questions he found difficult to answer", a habit Sereny attributes to Stangl subconsciously seeking refuge in more comfortable language. Sereny asked Stangl several times about the fate of prisoners whom he'd spoken about with affection. His response each time: "I don't know," though he surely could have guessed. I love Sereny as an interviewer - she is smart in how she goes about interviewing people, and insightful during the conversation itself. She's trying to figure out how Stangl could live with himself as the commandant of an extermination camp, and continue to live with himself after the fact. There are no clear answers, but any attempt at wrapping things up in a bow would come across as false. Too much is going on for that. Stangl lived with what he'd done for decades. The walls he built within himself were strong enough to withstand years facilitating mass-murder, a decade living free as a war-criminal, and a damning trial exposing the scope of his culpability. What ultimately brought Stangl's psychological fortress down was simply being asked to tell his life story in his own words. I'm a tremendous fan of Barbara's other books as Elizabeth Peters, and as I'm beginning to see the end in sight of that series, I was delighted to learn that she had written more books under a different name. This is my first one by her, and it hasn't scared me off at all since my love of Amelia Peabody and Barbara's writing is so solidified, but I can definitely say that this one is NOT that good. My hypothesis is that Barbara temporarily became fascinated with the world of jewelry and gems, learned all she could, was so excited about her new passion that she filled an entire book with it (remembering occasionally that she was supposed to be writing a mystery book and throwing us a bone in the form of a dead rat or a threatening letter). I'm joking (mostly), but honestly that's what it felt like.Like the other two heroines I've read in Michaels' books, Meg is a strong, feisty indiviudal who doesn't have any problems giving her opinions or holding her own against the rest of the characters. She has her own distinct personality that is shaped by her and her own experiences, she isn't overly influenced by her family, eventhough she has a strong sense of loyalty to them. The author directs her efforts at investigating the personality of Franz Stangl with whom she spoke in Düsseldorf prison where he was awaiting the result of his appeal against a life sentence. Stangl 'crowned' a career by becoming commandant of Sobibor (March 1942 – September 1942) and later commandant of Treblinka (September 1942 – August 1943). The Sobibor Death Camp was the second extermination camp built by the Nazis. The third camp was Treblinka. Both were located in occupied Poland. A great number of people perished in those camps. Thirteen years would pass before the outside world found out that Tazmamart existed. It would take another five years of international campaigning to shut it down. There were only 28 survivors. By 1991, most had lost up to a foot in height. Survivors were warned not to talk to the western press, but in Tahar Ben Jelloun the authorities have an enemy more formidable than 1,000 foreign journalists. Novelist, essayist, critic and poet, winner of the 1987 Prix Goncourt and the 1994 Prix Maghreb, Jelloun was born in Fez in 1944 and emigrated to France in 1961. This Blinding Absence of Light, for which he and his excellent translator have won this year's Impac prize, is based on the testimony of a former inmate of Tazmamart, and it defies any expectations you might have built up from the story above. It refuses the well-meaning but tired and ultimately dehumanising conventions of human rights horror journalism; it is not a political tract.

Into The Darkness: A Mystery Thriller (Mitch Tanner Book 2)

Blessed with a fiery, feisty, conscience-plagued heroine, the mixing pot of people was fun as always. Meg's nasty temper and sharp tongue seemed lovingly adored by her hysterical relative Cliff, while her softened attitude never seemed to ruffle the mysterious partner, Riley. The grandmother was an enjoyment to read about, too, as her eccentric personality brought a smile to my face. The Case of Mary Bell. Mary was an eleven year old girl in northern England who in 1968 strangled two little boys to death (aged 3 and 4). It was, as you imagine, a huge case in Britain. The facts about what the Nazis did, all of which can be obtained elsewhere, are not what makes reading this book so essential, nor is it some kind of horrific fascination in learning of the psychological profile of a man who oversaw the deaths of somewhere between 750,000 and 1,200,000 almost exclusively Jewish people (chilling when you think the estimated death toll - horrific whichever number is correct - might be out by nearly half a million!). Sereny doesn’t seem to be solely interested in Stangl’s psychology; I believe she was actually attempting to give us a glimpse, some insight, into the man’s soul. He initially trained as a weaver before joining the police force in his native Austria. There is some argument about whether as a policeman, Stangl was an ‘illegal Nazi’ - he himself always denied it, but his wife and colleagues seem to believe he was very likely a Nazi member before the Anschluss. There seems to have existed a powerful drive in Stangl, not only to be good and efficient at his job, but also to ‘be someone’. Were these the character traits the Nazis looked for when they sought to enlist the ‘right’ man, at first to be an administrator at Hartheim where the Nazis began killing those who were physically and mentally impaired, then Sobibor extermination camp, and finally to run what was essentially a human abbatoir at Treblinka? There is nothing to suggest that Stangl was a sadistic monster; there were a number of such types at Treblinka, as testified to by the very few slave prisoners who survived the camp, but there is no evidence to implicate Stangl in personal acts of cruelty; he was it seems a loyal husband and loving father. Yet, he was also the man in charge of this highly-efficient conveyor-belt that delivered death on a previously unprecedented scale.He had pronounced the words “my guilt”: but more than the words, the finality of it was in the sagging of his body, and on his face. Many of the people who went on to work in the death camps got their start in the euthanasia program. Psychologically, they were inured to the idea of murdering innocent people as being their job. Pressure was exerted from above to keep officers and guards in their places. Stangl was moved from Hartheim to Sobibor, where he made the leap from running a euthanasia clinic to a death camp. One of the most fascinating aspects to me was that there were certain moments when Stangl could have refused to cooperate without sacrificing himself or his family. He chose not to do that, but rather to go along with the program. Non lo è perchè l'autrice riporta fatti e documentazioni senza lasciarsi andare a divagazioni e interpretazioni (notevole è anzi la bibliografia che lei stessa ha consultato per la stesura del libro).