¿En qué momento se convierte la memoria histórica en un monstruo? Un joven historiador israelí, experto en los métodos de exterminio nazis, empieza a dirigir excursiones a los campos de muerte en Polonia a fin de ganar un poco más de dinero para mantener a su pequeña familia. Ahí lleva soldados, políticos y sobre todo alumnos de secundaria israelíes. En su carácter de "representante de la memoria", su tarea principal es asegurar, ciñéndose siempre al discurso oficial, que los jóvenes no se olviden nunca de lo que pasó. Y lo hace bien; cada vez le dan más trabajo y tiene que pasar más tiempo en Polonia, lejos de su mujer y su hijo. Los campos de exterminio se convierten así en su ambiente laboral y lo atroz va penetrando en su alma: con horror, descubre en las personas que guía y en sí mismo cierta admiración por la fuerza y la capacidad de ejecución de los asesinos. Para sobrevivir en este mundo, le dice un alumno en una de las visitas, "tenemos que ser un poco nazis". Poco a poco, el historiador se da cuenta de que ninguno de los visitantes está dispuesto a mirar de frente los crímenes y sus consecuencias morales y que el discurso pronunciado por él con tanta contundencia tampoco los prepara para ello.
Escrita con un lenguaje preciso e incisivo, El monstruo de la memoria es una novela de resonancia universal que advierte de los peligros que acechan a los países y a sus pueblos a la hora de construir una memoria histórica. En este relato de ascenso y caída inevitable, Sarid despliega los procesos destructivos y perversos que atraviesa un agente de la memoria en el intento de hacer bien su trabajo ( )

***WHY A MAYBE?***
I rarely read these kind of books. It's about a period in history I really disliked hearing about in school because we 'learned' it every year. The same thing over and over again.

But this sounds really interesting and I do want to search out a dutch translation of it so I can gift it someone. This is just the kind of thing they would enjoy.

The narrator of this short novel is a "Holocaust Guide," a "Poland Extermination Camp Expert." He primarily lives in Poland (his wife and child are in Israel), and guides groups and individuals (mostly Israeli school groups "so they will never forget" and visiting dignitaries) to the various death camps, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.

The novel is in the form of a letter to the head of Yad Vashem, purportedly a report by the narrator to explain what happened to him personally as he faced the memory and the reality of the atrocities. What the book documents is an account of the unraveling of an individual.

This was a dark book, set in the present day, but with the evils of the Holocaust lurking all around. How can we ever make sense of those events? Yet, how can we live with the memories of such evils?

Recommended.

4 stars ( )

Harrowing, exceedingly detailed and beyond sad, this is a story of a Ph.D. man who was taken under the wing of the Dean of the History Department of a college, soon the narrator becomes a member of Yad Yashem, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

The man becomes a leading expert of the Nazi methods of extermination. As his studies progress in the nightmare that was Treblinka, Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and some of the lessor known of the approximately 1,000 concentration camps throughout Poland, Germany and other countries as the Germans needed land and choose to move and more eastward.

As he gains extensive knowledge, he is offered the task of leading groups for one week as he takes the people further and further into the madness of Hitler and his country, now gone to sheer hell. He becomes more and more obsessed, describing the minute details that most do not want to learn.

He knows all the placement of the guards, their rank, the tragic Jews, and others deemed unnecessary, and he proceeds to clearly, in a calm voice the system of killing, the chemicals used to kill.

On his first trips with high school children, he is reported as aloof, cold and a fact-finding machine. As he progresses to lead more and more into the sheer madness, he becomes more animated and he is now shouting out the statistics, the horror, the dismemberment, the taking of the fillings of the Jews, the cutting of the hair, and then the walking to the death while music is played.

Leaving his wife and family at home in Israel, he now does not have other guides with him. Tour groups are sent to him. As he watches the expressions on the faces of those whom he guides, he becomes more or less animated based on what he feels like telling them.

There is a slow winding into madness as he reaches the point of no return, and the characters are in a play, a never ending play of insanity.

Chilling, well written and beyond sad! ( )