Book Review: The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid

´Don´t you know people are murderous? It´s in our nature´.

Some books invites you to the journey but let you take the rest of it by yourself. Sometimes, the journey means that you are faced with your own fears and misconceptions or beliefs. Sometimes, your only companion is the memory monster.

The Memory Monster by the Israeli writer Yishai Sarid - a name that I previously mentioned on the blog many years ago - is a short book but long enough to wake you up. That´s why people write and read books, in order to be faced with new realities and exposed to new ideas that may contradict their average ways of thinking and being. I´ve read the English translation from Hebrew, beautifully rendered by Yardenne Greenspan. 

Written as a 1st person account of a PhD in history, former guide to the concentration camps in Israel, who writes his report to the chairman of the Yad Vashem after being dismissed. After years and years of guiding people from a camp to another in Poland, the memory monster wants its share. 

The unnamed author of the report, the character of the book who writes at the first person, was ´drawn to the technical details of the annihilation: the mechanism, the manpower, the method´. His PhD topic and the subsequent book were on the topic of: Unity and Distinction in German Death Camps. Methods and actions during WWII.

Over and over again, he repeats a story that soon will take him over. It´s a mechanical repetition focused on the process, the mechanisms, the balance of power - ´to gain any kind of social standing, man must be capable of killing´. This acknowledgement of the mechanisms of power, repeated over and over again, obliterates the person, leaves place to imagination only. It forgets the persons, many of them anyway forgotten with anyone left to tell their stories. Most importantly, it amplifies the victimization stories and confirms the victory of the murderers. ´The chamber was connected to the motor of an old tank and the people inside were posoned with carbon monoxide, the guide continued, using phrases that glorified the process´. 

But what about the yearly ´March of the living´ bringing young Israeli to visit the deserted places of the concentration camps, wrapped in the blue and white flag, singing songs about how life will always prevail? Who won, in the end, those left with multi-generational trauma to cope with, or those who lost the war but are nowadays in the position to study and analyse and film what their grandparents did and visit Israel and found the country ´interesting´? Whose narrative won - the victims´ or those who made them victims? Is the fact that the murderers were in a position of power when they killed 6 million people perpetuate in fact their victory? How to read the fact that the oppressor´s pattern is considered an example worth following by some of the young participants to the tours? Sooner or later, we will be all eaten out by the memory monster.

I would be curious how those questions and dilemma reads out by someone who does not have any connection - emotional or historical - with the Shoah. For those for whom those connections exist, 

For those who do, this book open up beautifully so many memory wounds. Could it be that keeping them open is the best antidote to the memory monster?

Rating: 4 stars