Gitta Sereny

Este impresionante testimonio durge de las entrevistas de Gitta Sereny ( Autora de Albeert Speer, su batalla con la verdad y El trauma alemán, entre otras obras) a Franz Stangl, comandante de los campos de exterminio de Sobibor y de Treblinka.

The biography of Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp - a classic and utterly compelling study of evilOnly four men commanded Nazi extermination (as opposed to concentration) camps. Franz Stangl was one of the. Gitta Serenys investigation of this mans mind, and of the influences which shaped him, has become a classic. Stangl commanded Treblinka and was found guilty of co-responsibility for the slaughter there of at least 900, 000 people. Sereny, after weeks of talk with him and months of further research, shows us this man as he saw himself, and as he was seen by many others, including his wife. To horrify is not Serenys aim, though horror is inevitable. She is seeking an answer to the question which beggars reason: How were human beings turned into instruments of such overwhelming evil?Gitta Sereny is of Hungarian-Austrian extraction and is trilingual in English, French and German. During the Second World War she became a social worker, caring for war-damaged children in France. She gave hundreds of lectures in schools and colleges in America and, when the war ended, she worked as a Child Welfare Officer in UNRRA displaced persons camps in Germany. In 1949 she married the American Vogue photographer Don Honeyman and settled in London, where they brought up a son and a daughter and where she began her career as a journalist.Her journalistic work was of great variety but focussed particularly on the Third Reich and troubled children. She wrote mainly for the Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Sunday Times, The Times, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday Review. She also contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines around the world. Her books include: The Medallion, a novel; The Invisible Children, on child prostitution; Into That Darkness; and a biographical examination of Albert Speer. Gitta Sereny died in June 2012

From 1942 Speer was the second most powerful man in the Reich and Hitlers right-hand man. Gitta Sereny, through twelve years of research and through many conversations with Speer, his friends and colleagues, reveals how Speer came to terms with his own acts and failures to act, his progress from moral extinction to moral self-education and the question of his real culpability in the Nazi crimes.

In December 1968 two girls who lived next door to each other - Mary, aged eleven, and Norma, thirteen - stood before a criminal court in Newcastle, accused of strangling two little boys; Martin Brown, four years old, and Brian Howe, three. Norma was acquitted. Mary Bell, the younger but infinitely more sophisticated and cooler of the two, was found guilty of manslaughter. She evaded being branded as a murderer due to what the court ruled as diminished responsibility, but she was sentenced to detention for life. Step by step, Gitta Sereny pieces together a gripping and rare study of a horrifying crime; the murders, the events surrounding them, the alternately bizzare and nonchalant behaviour of the two girls, their brazen offers to help the distraught families of the dead boys, the police work that led to their apprehension, and finally the trial itself. What emerges from this extraorindary case is the inability of society to anticipate such events and to take adequate steps once disaster has struck.

Gitta Sereny is one of the worlds most respected journalists and historians. This book gathers together the best of her writing on Germany from over sixty years. It amounts to an extraordinary portrait of the country and its people, how they have come to terms with their Nazi past, both collectively and in specific instances - and how the burden of their guilt has altered the national identity. She writes about key individuals - Stangl, Speer - and the questions which their lives raise. Thepenetration and conviction of her writing throughout is startling and she constantly reminds us why it is important to consider the questions she addresses - war guilt, holocaust denial and the temptations of obedience.

Este impresionante testimonio surge de las entrevistas de Gitta Sereny a Franz Stangl, comandante de los campos de exterminio de Sobibor y de Treblinka. Durante más de setenta horas, a partir de 1972, cuando Stangl se encontraba en prision tras ser juzgado por genocidio, la autora no solo le entrevisto a el, sino tambien a miembros de su familia, a sus amigos, a las personas que el encontraron en su escondite en Brasil y a supervivientes de los campos de concentracion. A traves de ellas el lector se enfrenta a una de las cuestiones fundamentales del Holocausto, la banalidad del mal, el hecho de que actos de tal horror y crueldad fuesen obra de hombres ordinarios.Definido por Stephen Vizinczey como "el mas absorbente e iluminador libro sobre el genocidio nazi", este libro, estructurado a partir de una inteligente combinacion de entrevistas e investigacion bibliografica y de archivo tiene la virtud de enfocar desde una perspectiva completamente nueva uno de los episodios mas funestos del siglo XX, y lo hace no solo desde el punto de vista historico y etico, sino intentando penetrar en la psicologia de los verdugos, lo que lo convierte en un libro absolutamente unico.

LA AUTOBIOGRAFÍA MÇS COMPLETA Y EMOTIVA CONTRA EL TERCER REICHGitta Sereny nació en Viena en 1923 y fue educada en Austria, Inglaterra y Francia. Su obra periodística, publicada en diarios de toda Europa, ha aparecido fundamentalmente en el Daily Telegraph Magazine, el Sunday Times, el Independent on Sunday Review y el Times. En Estados Unidos ha colaborado para The New York Times Magazine, el Atlantic Monthly, el Harper`s Magazine y el Reader`s Digest. Entre sus libros hay que destacar The case of Mary Bell (1972, 1995), Into That Darkness (1974, 1995), The invisible Children (1984), Albert Speer: his Battle with Truth (1995) y Cries Unheard (1998). Cuando iba a la escuela, Gitta Sereny fue cautivada por el espectaculo casi teatral del rally de Nuremberg. Mas tarde, cuando los nazis entraron en Viena el espejismo se rompio rapidamente cuando vio a un eminente medico judio obligado a fregar el suelo por los soldados nazis. Los años de la guerra forjaron la fascinacion de Sereny por la Alemania de Hitler y la marca indeleble que esta dejo en el siglo XX. En este libro de experiencias y reflexiones Gitta Sereny recoge fragmentos de su propia vida en el marco de su larga busqueda para entender que es "lo que lleva a los seres humanos tan frecuentemente y tan rapidamente a abraza