In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust by Jeffrey Veidlinger (review)

Abstract

Christian prison chaplains, whom I studied in The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Lives of Nazi Perpetrators, who were incapable of maintaining sufficient ideological and personal distance. Similarly, the Canadian Pentecostal minister William Hull, who ministered to Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and whose memoir Struggle for a Soul is examined in McGlothlin’s first chapter, failed spectacularly to “mindread” Eichmann in any meaningful way. Hull inscribed his own desire for a conversion narrative that would prove the truth of the Christian story of redemption. But Adolf Eichmann refused to show contrition, to confess any wrongdoing, or to be saved by faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Confession narratives, McGlothlin shows, are one of two powerful plot lines that dominate perpetrator literature. The other one is the detective story. While the confession story follows a narrative arc from sin/crime to redemption/reconciliation, the detective plot begins in mystery and ends in the cathartic revelation of the truth. Both story lines suggest closure, which is not appropriate in the context of the Holocaust: neither epistemological closure nor moral closure do justice to victims or perpetrators of the Holocaust. McGlothlin correctly criticizes Gita Sereny for seeking “epistemological and ethical closure” in following these plot lines that show a Franz Stangl who comes to know the truth (detective story) and to disavow the wrongdoing (confession story) during his time as commander of Treblinka—just before he dies in prison. If this sounds too good to be true, it probably is, writes McGlothlin, because it does not capture “Stangl’s truth but rather her own desire for it” (174). Another famous confession narrative, which is not included in the book, provides a different ending. Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower (1968), which could have been included in either part of the book as nonfictional “mindreading” autobiography, or as a fictional “imagination” account of a dying SSman who confesses his guilt, consciously denies the reader the pleasure of closure and ends with an open question. McGlothlin has written an important book for this transitional moment. From now on, all explorations of the mind of the Holocaust perpetrator will be fictional, as the last survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators die. Future authors will benefit from her incisive ethical analysis and literary expertise.