Holocaust

Very interesting reading about the different witnesses, holocaust survivors, and Nazis living in a villa together for the Nuremberg trials. Some of them are a reminder that monsters walk among us. And that some of us can survive terrors beyond what we could ever imagine.

This book opens talking about the main character, the beautiful Countess Ingeborg Kalnoky and her story and how she came to be the matron of the villa. The book then focuses turn by turn on the people that came to be members of the villa and their experiences and impressions of their stay and experience waiting for their part in the Nuremberg trials.

The author located and interviewed the main character and as many other people that she could find that were there. This results in many little notes from people that were there that add well with the story. This is not a story that could have been written well without this kind of research. The Countess wrote a book about her time at the Villa but the author here points out things the Countess left out by purposeful omission or perhaps because she did not see the significance of people or events at the time. The guest book of the Countess for the house was a good record of who was there and seeing the comments of the people there as they left certainly give a small picture about how they felt about their stay there. Very interesting book but a bit fragmented as it starts out almost as a biography of the Countess and then talks of the people at the villa, talks about the trial, moving a bit to the next matron, and then ends with a brief focus back on the Countess and where she went after the war and where she ended up. Worth reading. ( )

An interesting account of the villa where both Nazi and concentration camp survivors stayed during the Nuremburg Trials. The author stumbled upon this story while talking to a family friend one night and in the course of the next decade or so she researched and wrote this book. A former countess was put in charge of maintaining, running, and keeping the peace of the villa and her visitor book and memories are the basis of many of the snapshots of history within this book's cover.

A must read for ever World War II history aficionado, I would highly recommend it. ( )

I was interested to learn about this house where Nazis and concentration camp survivors ate around the same table. The book is not a page-turner, but perhaps it is livelier in the original German. ( )

Interesting descriptions of a very strange place, and how far a talent for shallow chitchat really can take a girl. ( )