The Memory Monster
Yishai Sarid
In a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the unnamed narrator of The Memory Monster recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination, guiding tours through the death camps. The job becomes a mission, and then a dangerous obsession. He resents the...
Synopsis
In a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the unnamed narrator of The Memory Monster recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination, guiding tours through the death camps. The job becomes a mission, and then a dangerous obsession. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the genocide committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect a hint of admiration for the murderers: their efficiency, audacity and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill. With great perspicuity and the bitterest black humour, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honour the suffering of our forebears without becoming consumed by it?
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