I am a Scottish writer who discovered at the age of 49 that my grandfather was an SS officer involved in the Holocaust. I wrote my book, A Nazi in the Family, to understand how a dark family secret could remain hidden for so long and I have spent the years since publication talking about my grandfather as an example of an ordinary man who turned to doing extraordinary evil.
I wrote...
A Nazi In The Family
By
Derek Niemann
What is my book about?
The Niemann family - Karl, Minna and their four children - live in a quiet, suburban enclave. Every day Karl commutes to work, a business manager travelling around inspecting his "factories". In the evenings he returns home to life as a normal family man. Three years ago Derek Niemann, born and raised in Scotland, made the chilling discovery that his grandfather Karl had been an officer in the SS - and that his "business" used thousands of slave labourers in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Derek had known little about the German side of his family, but now a lifetime of unsettling hints and clues began to fall into place. With the help of surviving relatives and hundreds of previously unknown family photographs, Derek uncovers the true story of what Karl did. A Nazi in the Family is an illuminating portrayal of how ordinary people can fall into the service of a monstrous regime.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
By
Anne Frank,
B.M. Mooyaart
Why this book?
Will anything ever match this book in all its humanity, capturing the constant fear, uncertainty, claustrophobia, and poignant hope for something better? It would be hard to find any work that so encapsulates the cruel pointlessness of the Holocaust.
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The Long Night: A True Story
By
Ernst Israel Bornstein
Why this book?
The author, a keen observer of behaviour under appalling conditions, has an astonishingly wise and humane attitude that bears him through both internment and concentration camps. I have a personal interest in this book, and the writer, because I am the speaking partner of his daughter Noemie Lopian, and we talk at synagogues, schools, universities, and public events to ask for kindness, toleration, and understanding.
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East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
By
Philippe Sands
Why this book?
A remarkably broad and detailed examination into the lives of men who established the legal definitions of genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as a detective story into the author’s own family.
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KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
By
Nikolaus Wachsmann
Why this book?
How I wish I had had access to this book when I was researching my own book on my grandfather’s role in the Holocaust. There have been so many academic books about the concentration camps and this one, published 70 years after the last camp was liberated, feels like a landmark.
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Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice
By
Mary Fulbrook
Why this book?
How do the perpetrators, victims, and their descendants deal with the mental legacy of the Holocaust? This is sobering, illuminating stuff from one of the world’s leading Holocaust academics.