Tag Archive | Catherine Chidgey

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey

Unique And Horrifying

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey is a heart wrenching historical tale that looks at the Holocaust in a different way.

The book alternates between four voices – the former camp commandant in 1954 looking backwards, his wife in the form of an imaginary diary, a Jewish doctor writing to his daughter in 1946 looking backwards and eye witness accounts from the local town. Together these voices piece together life at Buchenwald.

We witness the commandant making excuses for what he does, trying to justify what can never be justified. We see his wife as she has cancer looking backwards to her life in Munich and also discovering a forbidden faith in God. The doctor is looking for news of his wife and daughter in Theresienstadt as he operates his cancer curing machine. And the townspeople deny what is happening on their doorstep.

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