Into the Darkness (Darkness #1)

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Franz Stangl served as commandant at the Treblinka extermination camp during World War II; he oversaw the murder of over 700,000 people. After the war, he fled to Brazil with his family and escaped justice for over a decade despite making little effort to hide himself. He never even took on an assumed name.

Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience - Goodreads Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience - Goodreads

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.Her yellow raincoat flapped in the cool breeze when she walked by, that blonde hair making her look like a drowned rat as she stopped to taste the rain.

Into the Darkness | The Darkness Series | Author K.F. Breene Into the Darkness | The Darkness Series | Author K.F. Breene

THIS AUTHOR PLAGIARIZED A VICTIM OF SA's STORY AND GLAMOURIZED IT WHILE ALSO USING HIM AS THE NARRATOR OF SAID STORY 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.” 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. This was my third Barbara Michaels book and I keep falling in love with them harder the more I read. For me this book was all about secrets that families keep and the lengths people go to make sure they are never found out. The suspense is build up slowly with a few hints of danger and malicious gossip floating around in the air. The tension slowly builds until it boils over in a chaotic finale that gives you the pay off you are wanting the entire time you are reading this. 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.Sereny's book weaves her conversations with Stangl with that of others that she interviewed within Stangl's orbit -- his wife, family, survivors of Treblinka, etc. She also verified various facts within the book with testimony at Stangl's and others' trials as well as with other Nazi documents. This is the language of Islamic mysticism. Salim is not religious when he arrives in Tazmamart, but his situation is the real version of the spiritual hell that Islamic mystics describe in metaphor. He escapes from his torments by following in their footsteps, imagining his way as far into his mind as his slowly decaying body will allow. He knows his reverie is over when he can smell the stench. Gitta Sereny was an Austrian born journalist, biographer and historian. She passed away in England aged 91, following a long illness.

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Poi verifica le sue risposte incontrando la moglie di Stangl in Brasile, altri testimoni in parti diverse dell’Europa, consultando documenti e fonti. Una ricerca durata anni.For a change, there is never anything supernaturally suspected in this novel, nor do we have the huge, rambling Victorian house. There's of course the trademark cat that gets in the way, coupled with typical character humor. It's almost more of a Elizabeth Peters mystery than a Barbara Michaels one, so don't go in expecting the typical. Instead Michaels seemed to want to focus the energy she usually spends on ghosts in mansions on the mystery of old jewelery. Not as fun to me, but still a worthy venture. She seems to have either thoroughly done the needed research, or else has knowledge about jewelry as much as she does houses, cats, the supernatural, and Egypt. You will know more on old jewelry and rose gardening by the time the book is through, yet thankfully it's not given in a preachy manner, and only a need-to-know basis.

Into the darkness | Books | The Guardian

Nella storia di Franz Stangl si vede come una persona normale, all'interno di un certo contesto, possa ritrovarsi a osservar compiersi il male assoluto sotto i suoi occhi senza muovere un dito, nell'indifferenza e poi nell'apatia. 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. Him is a serial killer with his demon by his side hunting his next victim which is always a woman. When he sees a woman named Lyra he is highly intrigued by her, Him needs to know more about her. 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.A questo proposito, Sereny mette a confronto i racconti e i ricordi di Richard Glazer, ebreo cèco, sopravvissuto a Treblinka, proprio con quelli del personaggio principale del suo studio: i primi lucidi, dettagliati, privi di retorica, elaborati, pregnanti – l’altro, invece, si contraddice, cambia versione, indora la pillola, a se stesso e all’ascoltatrice. Sve je započelo programom eutanazije u koji su bile uključene mentalno bolesne osobe. Iako se o tome moglo čuti, nitko se nije potrudio detaljno objasniti. Postavljeni cilj tog programa bio je navodno olakšanje, ali stvarna svrha zapravo je bilo masovno ubijanje pod krinkom eutanazije. Nakon što je dovršen ovaj pogram pojavili su se logori istrjebljenja. In Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, author Paul Bloom describes: ...this is because the thought of touching the man, of laying your hands on him and shoving, gives rise to a powerful emotional response, much more than the thought of just throwing a switch, and this is why most people see this act as morally wrong (p.169). This concept is illustrated time and again in Stangl's perception of his actions at Treblinka. Stangl's wife, Therese, recounts a conversation with her husband she had after he received his appointment at the Sobibor extermination camp: I said, 'I know what you are doing in Sobibor?...What are you doing in this?'...he said...'I have nothing to do with any of this...My work is purely administrative...Oh yes, I see it. But I don't do anything to anybody.'(p.136) This theme plays again when Stangl vehemently denies having ever fired a gun into a group of people who were, hours later, gassed en mass in an operation he was overseeing. After the war Stangl managed to escape to Brazil where he lived under his own name. He was found by Wiesenthal - the famous Nazi hunter - in 1967. I didn't realize there were 4 "extermination" camps set up solely for murder, Chelmno, Belsec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. All of them in Poland and all of which lasted for under 2 years and then were shut down when their work was complete. Only 87 people survived the four, no children. The killing process also included torture before their speedy deaths, I had heard or seen in movies or videos all of the indignities they were subjected to, but I hadn't known of the internal searches for hidden valuables.