Frederick Forsyth

The Odessa File

Tillie Baker

'Time. The passing of time. And the realisation that not all Germans were Josef Kramers. Or, what was his name, Roschmann? Roschmanns. Mind you, I still can't get over a sneaking sense of mistrust for people of my own generation among your nation.'

'They're better… Let's face it, you have to be better.'

..an ancient mariner, condemned to live, had looked into the eyes of his crewmates as they died of thirst, and read the curse in them. But for me there was no curse, for I was immune even to the feeling of guilt. That was to come years later. There was only the emptiness of a dead man still walking upright.

There are no excuses, no place to say people 'got caught up' with the wrong crowd, for the false pretences and promises of a culture withstanding. Not at the expense of the diverse culture of the European people - we can coexist, the sooner we learn that then perhaps one can forgive even what they did.

'To understand everything is to forgive everything.' 

When one can understand the people, their gullibility and their fear, their greed and their lust for power, their ignorance and their docility to the man who shouts the loudest, one can forgive. Yes, one can forgive even what they did.

The years and passing of time may never erase the suffering, nor the memories or nightmares - yet perhaps learning again to love, to wonder, to see the beauty in the mundane, maybe that is what we must all do for ourselves.

But with the passing of the years I have learned again to love; to love the rocks and the trees, the sky above and the river flowing past the city.

Evil contnues to manifest itself, the consequences of oppressive restrictions even made by the victors. Such a fine line we walk upon.

For the evil that I have seen has survived and flourished and only the good has departed in dust and mockery.

There is a temptation to wish that the people capable of such hatred and destruction were different - that somehow that provides an explanation, a characteristic to point blame toward. Yet no such trait can be found, just as the millions of ordinary people who fell victim, their oppressors were so depressingly ordinary.

'He thought of the face in the glass booth, and remembered that his impression the time had been how ordinary that face had been, so depressingly ordinary.'

This distance between himself and the horrors of the past prove what is meant by 'never again'. Should we ask for no names, dates, details, we cannot escape the mistakes of the past - we must not be complacent. What if it were your mother? Your father? Your friend? Would you let the world forget their names? Forget what they fought through, regardless if they made it out.

'..although what he read disgusted him, he could not feel it concerned him. It was another time, another placem a long way away… Something inside him has persuaded him it was nothing to do with Peter Miller, so he had asked for no names, dates, details..'

Ambar

Tillie

Serra

Can you forgive the past? It's 1963 and a young German reporter has been assigned the suicide of a holocaust survivor. The news story seems straighforward, this is a tragic insight into one man's suffering. But a long hidden secret is discovered in the pages of the dead man's diary. What follows is life-and-death hunt for a notorious former concentration camp-commander, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands, a man as yet unpunished.

The Odessa File

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