Book description
Only four men commanded Nazi extermination (as opposed to
concentration) camps. Franz Stangl was one of the. Gitta Sereny's
investigation of this man's mind, and of the influences which shaped
him, has become a classic. Stangl commanded Treblinka and was found
guilty of co-responsibility for the slaughter there of at least 900,
000 people. Sereny, after weeks of talk with him and months of further
research, shows us this man as he saw himself, and 'as he was seen by
many others, including his wife.
To horrify is not Sereny's aim, though horror is inevitable. She is
seeking an answer to the question which beggars reason: How were human
beings turned into instruments of such overwhelming evil?
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 worked 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 was of great variety but focussed particularly
on the Third Reich and troubled children. She wrote mainly for the
Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Sunday Times, The
Times, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday
Review. She also contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines
around the world.
Her books include: The Medallion, a novel; The Invisible
Children, on child prostitution; Into That Darkness; and a
biographical examination of Albert Speer. Gitta Sereny died in June 2012
