Some subjects of biographies that I've read recently: Stalin. Himmler. Hitler. Stalin's Jewish Doctors' Plot was the subject of a monograph that I read. I've read a couple of works on the Gulag system. And then there was Wiesel's Night.
I promise you, I am not fond of Himmler. I have no love for the Gulag. And yet, authors write these, and I read them. I am forever haunted by the closing lines of Night. After the war is over, after the liberation from the camps that cost the lives of both of Wiesel's parents, this kid who never got to be a kid, reflected:
One day I was able to get up, , after gathering all my stength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myelf since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror a corpse gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.
Thomas Merton wrote about some psychological testing done with some Nazi guards. There was no psychopathy, nothing that would suggest that they were anything but normal. They were normal, human beings functioning within their society.
And that's why I read the bios of the bad guys. I don't like or admire them; I have no desire to emulate them. My heroes are, I think, much more worthy of emulation: Merton, Mother Theresa, Philip Berrigan, Cardinal Bernardin. But I read about the despicable ones because I take the mantra with utter seriousness:
NEVER AGAIN!!
And, thus the fascination with the Boston Bombers. Never again.
So somebody's got to write those books. And I will read. I hope you do too. The guy in me who got his BA in history knows that you can't know where you should go if you don't know where you've been.
Thanks for hanging out.
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