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jdp85 's review for:
The Painted Bird
by Jerzy Kosiński
A fictional account of an orphaned gypsy boy during the German occupation of eastern Europe during World War II. Pretty much every awful thing you can imagine (and many you can't) happens to this poor kid. Predictably, the boy's trials and tribulations change him, and not for the better. Reminds me of John Bunyan's 17th-century classic The Pilgrim's Progress, but much darker. Here are a few memorable excerpts:
"Wouldn't it be easier to change people's eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn in them?"
"After each train had passed I saw whole battalions of ghosts with ugly, vengeful faces coming into the world. The peasants said the smoke from the crematories went straight to heaven, laying a soft carpet at God's feet, without even soiling them. I wondered whether so many Jews were necessary to compensate God for the killing of His son. Perhaps the world would soon become one vast incinerator for burning people. Had not the priest said that all were doomed to perish, to go 'from ashes to ashes'?"
"Human being, he said, is a proud name. Man carries in himself his own private war, which he has to wage, win or lose, himself—his own justice, which is his alone to administer."
"Wouldn't it be easier to change people's eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn in them?"
"After each train had passed I saw whole battalions of ghosts with ugly, vengeful faces coming into the world. The peasants said the smoke from the crematories went straight to heaven, laying a soft carpet at God's feet, without even soiling them. I wondered whether so many Jews were necessary to compensate God for the killing of His son. Perhaps the world would soon become one vast incinerator for burning people. Had not the priest said that all were doomed to perish, to go 'from ashes to ashes'?"
"Human being, he said, is a proud name. Man carries in himself his own private war, which he has to wage, win or lose, himself—his own justice, which is his alone to administer."