Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience
by Gitta Sereny

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Book Reviews of Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Book Review: A well-researched and -written classic of Holocaust studies
Summary: 5 Stars

Sereny's is no mere biography of Stangl; instead, his life becomes the point of departure for a complex look at Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans (and Austrians, like Stangl), the workings of Treblinka, the escape and pursuit of Stangl after the war's end, and the Catholic Church's complicity in aiding Nazi war criminals. On this last subject, readers will especially appreciate Sereny's thoughtful and scholarly approach, as well as her persuasive conclusions regarding Pope Pius XII's curiously ambivalent behavior at the peak of the death camps' operations. Compare Sereny's analysis with the recent Vatican apology (of sorts), and judge for yourself which is the more credible account.

Throughout the book, Sereny manages to keep the focus on individuals and still retain the vast scope necessary to treat the Holocaust as a historical event. Stangl himself is presented as an ordinary man who made his Faustian pact and tried, like so many former prisoners of the camps, to move on and repress his feelings without processing them. His interviews with Sereny were ultimately as cathartic as they were therapeutic, and he died soon after their last meeting.

The impression we are left with at the end of "Into That Darkness" is one of tragedy as well as horror, for unlike a Goebbels or a Himmler or an Eichmann, Stangl could have been one of us. Sereny makes no apologies for Stangl; quite the contrary. But that's what makes this particular truth so hard to face.

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