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What happened to the Germans? They made Holocaust – and then what. There is a grand silence, business as usual, so noboby can understand, and rarely someone asks, what made them so bad, once upon a time? Well, even the word Holocaust was coined only in the eighties of the last century, i.e. much later. Other atrocities were frequent too, by simple, normal, christian people. Aside from the question, if the holocaust was unique – every single death and violence is unique, at least to the involved – how can we really understand each other? In stress? Remote killings? Can we see past history? By heart, not just by locations and dates. How can we imagine our fathers and mothers with their life experiences?
Dr. Labriola’s book is not about family life as the picture with one of the interviewed suggests. It contains remembrances of singular, very personal events in the second world war and shortly after, many of them traumatic, short confessions, spoken into the microphone of an empathic american translator, who works and lives in Germany since years.
You will be shocked by this book. Like normal US citicens today may be shocked by Trump, whom they brought to power, and have no way to stop him murdering seafarers he thinks might carry drugs. "Living in the Third Reich" does not report on standards of living, of recovery time post depression, of politics or of hunger years even after 1945 with deep winters in the ruins and food stamps for all. It’s not a book by an historian. The short personal storys hurt directly in the heart. They open wounds to see, not commented, uninterrupted, just translated literally to english. This might even be a gruel blueprint for today’s "great wars", seen from the human side.
Most tales are very short. The horror comes peacemeal. This makes Labriola’s collection easy to pause reading, to ponder each case. But this book, this diligently assembled compendium should definitely not be missed by all who want to get a feeling of war and post-war, of the forever "homo homini lupus" (BC from Plautus in Asinaria, a comedy!).
264 Seiten knapp 25 € – kommt aus England – ISBN 978-1-0361-2462-5
More at https://www.lehmanns.de/shop/geisteswissenschaften/75972409-9781036124625-living-in-the-third-reich
Link hierher:
https://blogabissl.blogspot.com/2026/03/living-in-third-reich-by-patrick.html
