Synopses & Reviews
Katrin Himmler's cool but meticulous examination of the Himmler story reveals - in all its dark complexity - the gulf between the 'normality' of bourgeois family life and the horrors perpetrated by one member. This riveting family memoir provides essential new information on the private life and background of one of the twentieth- century's most notorious killers - not a lone evil executioner, but a middle-class family man, loved and fully supported by his respectable German family. It also offers a unique account of one women's courageous attempt to deal with her chilling inheritance.
'It is part of the creeping discomfort in reading her book to realise the incredibly ordinary middle-class background of these three sons of a rather pompous provincial headmaster and to see how, right until the end, he was almost able to convince himself it hadn't happened like it had' Sunday Times
'You get a vivid sense of a particular kind of German conservatism - Roman Catholic, monarchist - and of how, weirdly, it found an outlet in the upstart, part-pagan thuggery of Nazism' Independent
'One can only admire her bravery . . . In a way, Katrin Himmler's book is not a story about the past, but one about the present. The most interesting details are the ones she gives of her own quest' Daily Telegraph
Synopsis
Once upon a time the Himmlers were just a normal German familymiddle-class, hard-working, well-educated. There were three brothers, Gebhart, Heinrich, and Ernst. Heinrich grew up to become the head of Hitlers SS, mastermind of the concentration camp system, and chief perpetrator of the Holocaust. When Katrin Himmler, Heinrichs great-niece, was 15, one of her classmates asked during a history lesson if she was related to the Himmler. "Yes," she stammered, at which there was a deathly hush in the classroom and the teacher, embarrassed and unsure, quickly moved the lesson on. As she grew older, Katrin gave her family history a wide berth, but married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto and with a young, half-Jewish son, she realized that she could not evade the past so easily. Katrin Himmlers cool but meticulous examination of the Himmler story revealsin all its dark complexitythe gulf between the "normality" of bourgeois family life and the horrors perpetrated by one member. A more nuanced portrait of Heinrich himself emergesnot a lone evil executioner, but a middle-class family man, loved and fully supported by his respectable German family.
About the Author
Katrin Himmler is the great niece of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, Gestapo, and leading organizer of the Holocaust.