Thank you Lemond. I will put that on my list (I do have a bit of an obsession about the Holocaust - when I was a child, the area we lived in had the largest Jewish population outside Israel. Almost all of our friends and neighbours had lost many family members in that horror, and many of them had experienced it personally. I suppose it's stuck with me.)
I am always struck by how matter-of-fact good Holocaust literature is. the writers don't wallow/dwell on the cruelty (they hardly need to), but present it in what is, to me, an even more horrific way.
This happened. It was our daily life. It can't properly be described because there are no words. The ones who could really tell you the worst didn't live to write or speak about it.
There are many books which sensationalise that period (even glamourise it, God forbid), and which are written for a prurient readership. I've never been interested in them as I don't want to wallow in cruelty. I am interested in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people - like you and me.
And the perpetrators - what went on in their heads and what sort of people were they? (Probably like you and me as well, if the dreadful truth be known.)
None of us know what we are capable of withstanding, or doing, until we are in that position of complete powerlessness, or of ultimate power.
Sorry - I will get off my soapbox now.