The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

I just put it down. And yes, I did cry above this one too, hey, I admit it. At least I have a heart and I am grily (despite of some comments recently...). Regardless the emotional impact it had on me (something measurable I can use in jugding if I want to keep just read book or not) I am stunned to discover it is so true! I was born few hundred kilometeres from Auschwitz. I visited it for the first time when I was ten. I went back, astonished to discover the same stones, the same silence. I drew the map of precisely planned 'factory' in my head, to keep it alive for-ever, as a reminder of what a human is capable of. Just as a counter balance to what I am striving to achieve - the better, the wiser, the more sublime, the normal...

I was educated to remember II WW. I practiced ways of communication and PR. I learned the genious of Hilter's speaches - we would analyze them at the university. I would spend hours, those drunk student ones, disputing the why's of hitlerism. I would grow older and try to learn more - I watched documentaries, I watched 'Schindler's List' and wondered over 'The Boy with Striped Pyjamas'; I read 'Death is my trade' admiring Merle's bravery and craft; I watched sovjet 'Everyday hitlerism' (propaganda film from the 60's). I tasted it, I tried to measure it, I looked for the answers.

But only my own life - my harsh experience of what another person can be and sometimes allows himself to be/to do - made me realize the heaviness and the lightness of evil and the importance and the ambivalence of law. Evil happens. We make it happen. We let it happen.

And it is us who needs to live with the cosequences.

So make sure you do not judge, just measure actions considering reactions and consequences. That is our reality.

I am not sure, but I think I cried over my own stupid luck and my luck I made it through my own evil experience. Yes, selfish. Oh, well...