Photography > Currently Digging... (32) > Every Man Dies Alone
The first book I ever cried about was The Diary of Anne Frank. The book started me on the path to reading every book about World War Two I could get my hands on. I just couldn't wrap my brain around what happened. Still can't. And I'm just a bystander nearly sixty years later. Later, in junior high, a woman who survived Auschwitz came to talk to our school about her experiences. I remember her showing us the number tattooed on her arm. Reduced to a number. I held her hand and had her sign her name on a piece of paper because, even then, I was aware of how quickly those that experienced WW2 were dying and that my generation was one of the last to hear first-hand accounts from those who were there. Still later, documentaries depicting piles of bodies being thrown into mass graves further threw me into a tailspin. I didn't understand. I don't understand. It is still incomprehensible.
I stopped reading about WW2 many years ago. Until now. Every Man Dies Alone is one of the best books about WW2 I've read. About the working class in Germany and what they did and didn't do to fight Hitler. None of this heroic underground resistance, just an accounting of what regular folks did when their world turned mad. The book is based on a real couple. I didn't look up their real names and view their pictures until after I read the book. And when I did, there they were, faded black and white photos of the couple I'd been reading about, hollow-eyed, staring at me from the grave. Anyway. The book was written in 24 days by a German author with quite the storied past himself yet it wasn't published in English until quite recently. What struck me was not the obvious horror of the Holocaust you so often read about, not the mighty battles fought across country lines, it was the subtle and sometimes mundane lives of those everyday, working-class citizens in Germany struggling to live through such a dark period while facing the toughest questions of their lives? Do you side with Hitler for appearances sake to make your life easier? Or do you deny even while knowing it's a death sentence because you can go to your death with a clean conscience? What would you do? This book is about what millions did to get by. This is how it was. This is what happened. Read it, know it, don't ever forget it.
I stopped reading about WW2 many years ago. Until now. Every Man Dies Alone is one of the best books about WW2 I've read. About the working class in Germany and what they did and didn't do to fight Hitler. None of this heroic underground resistance, just an accounting of what regular folks did when their world turned mad. The book is based on a real couple. I didn't look up their real names and view their pictures until after I read the book. And when I did, there they were, faded black and white photos of the couple I'd been reading about, hollow-eyed, staring at me from the grave. Anyway. The book was written in 24 days by a German author with quite the storied past himself yet it wasn't published in English until quite recently. What struck me was not the obvious horror of the Holocaust you so often read about, not the mighty battles fought across country lines, it was the subtle and sometimes mundane lives of those everyday, working-class citizens in Germany struggling to live through such a dark period while facing the toughest questions of their lives? Do you side with Hitler for appearances sake to make your life easier? Or do you deny even while knowing it's a death sentence because you can go to your death with a clean conscience? What would you do? This book is about what millions did to get by. This is how it was. This is what happened. Read it, know it, don't ever forget it.