The Holocaust is one of the most devastating, troubling failures of human kind in the twentieth century.
Gabrielle Robinson attempts to encapsulate a human aspect of the Holocaust in a way that’s personal to her. Specifically, uncovering her grandfather’s Nazi past and his voluntary enlistment with the Nazi party.
Though not a soldier sent to the front lines, Robinson’s grandfather served as an eye doctor in Germany, a kind and gentle man that Robinson goes to great pains to wrestle with how the memories and vision of the grandfather she has could be so tied up in the grand scope of the horrors of Nazi Germany. As a German herself, Robinson goes to great pains to try and reason through the nuance of what this could mean for an everyday German, what explanations could possibly be given and how the German people themselves made these every day decisions.
Yet even with this nuance, it was particularly difficult for me to swallow. Robinson goes in excruciating pains not to excuse the deeply troubling implications that her grandfather’s willingness in signing up for the Nazi party means from a historical perspective yet is invariably biased by virtue of him being her grandfather – a man who was by all accounts kind, gentle and loving and yet aligned himself with a party that systematically murdered millions. An apathy towards the plights of the Jewish people along with the other millions who were murdered at the hands of ordinary Germans makes separating the party and the person that much more difficult for me, one that Robinson herself seems to recognize as difficult.
Filled with nuance and a deep self-reflection, Api’s Berlin Diaries would be best suited for someone interested in learning more about the perspective of every day Germans living and working not just under, but for the Nazi party. I found that for me, I could not help but think of the millions of lives members of the Nazi party destroyed.
I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review by Books Forward.
The Hopeful Wanderer 