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A review by mlautchi
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
4.0
I should admit that I watched the movie before I read this, which removed some of the pleasure of reading it because I knew all the events before they unfolded. Yet this is an important book, and though it was not new to me I did nonetheless enjoy reading it, not least because it explores concepts that interest me, collective guilt and retroactive justice.
Quotes
“Was it sufficient that the ordinances under which the camp guards and enforcers were convicted were already on the statue books at the time they committed their crime? Or was it a question of how the laws were interpreted and enforced at the time they committed their crimes, and that they were not applied to them? What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in society? Or is law what must be enacted whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?” (89)
“ ‘What would you have done?’ “
“She was not pursuing her own interests, but seeking her own truth, her own justice. Because she had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle was her struggle.” (133)
“I also remembered the ovens of the crematorium that were on display in another barracks that contained cells. I remembered my vain attempts, back then, to imagine in concrete detail a camp filled with prisoners and guards and suffering. I really tried; I looked at the barracks, closed my eyes, and imagined row upon row of barracks. I measured a barracks, calculated its occupants from the information booklet, and tried to imagine how crowded it had been. I found that the steps between the barracks had also been used for roll call, and as I looked from the bottom of the camp towards the top, I filled them with rows of backs. But it was all in vain, and I was filled with a sense of the most dreadful, shameful failure.” (153)
“Whatever validity of the concept of collective guilt may or may not have have morally or legally-for my generation it was a lived reality.”
“The geological layers of our lives lie so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as a matter that has been fully formed and pushed as aside, but absolutely present and alive.”
Quotes
“Was it sufficient that the ordinances under which the camp guards and enforcers were convicted were already on the statue books at the time they committed their crime? Or was it a question of how the laws were interpreted and enforced at the time they committed their crimes, and that they were not applied to them? What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in society? Or is law what must be enacted whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?” (89)
“ ‘What would you have done?’ “
“She was not pursuing her own interests, but seeking her own truth, her own justice. Because she had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle was her struggle.” (133)
“I also remembered the ovens of the crematorium that were on display in another barracks that contained cells. I remembered my vain attempts, back then, to imagine in concrete detail a camp filled with prisoners and guards and suffering. I really tried; I looked at the barracks, closed my eyes, and imagined row upon row of barracks. I measured a barracks, calculated its occupants from the information booklet, and tried to imagine how crowded it had been. I found that the steps between the barracks had also been used for roll call, and as I looked from the bottom of the camp towards the top, I filled them with rows of backs. But it was all in vain, and I was filled with a sense of the most dreadful, shameful failure.” (153)
“Whatever validity of the concept of collective guilt may or may not have have morally or legally-for my generation it was a lived reality.”
“The geological layers of our lives lie so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as a matter that has been fully formed and pushed as aside, but absolutely present and alive.”