The Fifth Son, by Elie Wiesel (Summit, 220 pp., $15.95)
Killers are much more intriguing than their dead. As if they took not just life but energy and sustenance, too. We all die: it’s a pretty passive, poor accomplishment. Murder, in contrast, must be active—and a clear, sensational repudiation of human law. Even JFK was almost eclipsed by the unfathomable Oswald. Commonplace dead (name one Richard Speck victim) don’t get any billing. Add number to death, add six million, and you endow murder with eternal (if not necessarily helpful) fascination. Most Holocaust accounts are encumbered by the why of it. You can accept that Hitler and Eichmann were bad men—but their grotesqueness has never been given satisfactory diagnosis. The German people, moreover, acquiesced in horror, and no one can yet fit out a persuasive concept of national psychosis. Jews memorialize the Holocaust with rightful obsession in part, I think, because they’re indignant at being upstaged by Hitler and his Reich. Intellectually we care more for assassin than for prey. That has to be the final insult. Martyrdom is a much overrated honor.
Comments