Product Description

Only four men commanded Nazi extermination (as opposed to concentration) camps. Franz Stangl was one of them; he commanded Treblinka and was found guilty of co-responsibility for the slaughter there of at least 900,000 people. Aiming to discover how human beings were turned into instruments of such overwhelming evil, Gitta Sereny investigates Stangl's mind, and the influences which shaped him. Having talked to him for weeks and conducted months of research, she portrays the man as he saw himself and as he was seen by others, including his wife.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83757 in Books
• Published on: 1995-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 379 pages

From the Publisher
The biography of Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp - a classic and utterly compelling study of evil.

About the Author
Gitta Sereny is of Hungarian-Austrian extraction and is trilingual in English, French and German. During the Second World War she became a social worker, caring for war-damaged children in France. She gave hundreds of lectures in schools and colleges in America and, when the war ended, she wored as a Child Welfare Officer in UNRRA displaced persons' camps in Germany. In 1949 she married the American Vogue photographer Don Honeyman and settled in London, where they brought up a son and a daughter and where she began her career as a journalist.
Her journalistic work is of great variety but has focussed particularly on the Third Reich and troubled children. She has written mainly for the Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Sunday Times, The Times, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday Review. She has also contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines around the world.
Her other books are The Medallion, a novel; The Invisible Children, on child prostitution; Into That darkness, on Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, and a biographical examination of Albert Speer.

Customer Reviews

Human Evil laid bare
Sereny's contribution to the history of the holocaust is deeply disturbing, strangely unjudgemental and goes a long way to helping the reader understand how a human being like Stangl, with a relatively unremarkable background could take part in the most terrible crime in recent history. A harrowing and terrible is the revelation that Stangl had a lot in common with any of us. Would we be capable of the same thing if we were in his shoes? Ask yourself the old question: Is man inherently evil? Read it.

A flawed but fascinating account of Franz Stangl
This is without doubt an important book, being one of the few written about the holocaust which genuinely attempts to see into the minds of those who committed the terrible crimes of the period. When the Gita Sereny does this, it is a fascinating and compelling attempt at understanding the workings of man's mind who finds himself in the most unimaginable situation. The author does not attempt to symphasise or condemn him, rather she offers up his explanations for his actions, for the reader to judge for him or herself. However in the later chapters, the book degenerates into a poorly researched attempt to disect the role of the Catholic church in the holocaust, and the book loses all form or direction. If you are interested in the political machinations of the vatican during WWII I would suggest reading 'Hitler's Pope' by John Cornwell.

This book was good, but it could have been so much better, if the author had directed her attention fully at the character of Franz Stangl rather than attempting to deal with a myriad of other events, which have been far better covered by other writers.

Deeply insightful, moving and utterly gripping
Sereny's masterpiece takes us deep into the soul of man and examines his reasons for evil. This book cannot be recommended too highly - it is a mammoth contribution to our understanding of human nature and evil.