The nameless narrator of this story, a young Israeli historian, is doing his doctorate in "Holocaust Studies" – not because he is particularly interested, but because there are the best scholarships there. He worked his way through hundreds of documents about the extermination camps, soon becoming an expert and becoming a tour guide in the Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobidor memorials. Day in and day out he explains to the tourists and descendants of the murdered what happened in the camps. He begins to deal with the details of the systematic killing more and more intensely. And with the questions behind it – when a person becomes a murderer, whether you can forgive the Germans. So that his view of the present shifts completely. The "monster" that gives the book its title is both the millionfold murder and the impossibility of adequately remembering it. It is a silent book, rather a kind of primer that makes it clear that trying to commemorate always means failure. The lawyer and author Yishai Sarid chose the form wisely: his text documents the attempt to delve into the technical and psychological mechanisms of the killing industry of the Nazis. It is addressed to the director of the Yad Vashem memorial, to whom the narrator would like to apologize – for an escalation that is almost inevitable. (Ü: Ruth Achlama, 176 p., 21 euros, no & but)
Books for the vacation: 50 reading tips for the summer
