One life

Tom Lampert reconstructs the lives of eight people in Nazi Germany based on exhaustive research in archives all over the world. Among them is Miriam P., a troubled young woman deported from Palestine to Germany in 1933, who finds herself on a path to the gas chamber. And then there is the rabid Nazi Wilhelm K., who assumes the position of commissioner general in Belorussia only to fight for the lives of Jews in the Minsk ghetto. Karl L., the only Jew Commissioner K. is able to save, is transferred to Theresienstadt, where he takes control of the Ghetto Guard and relentlessly pursues any violation of concentration camp rules. As the stories of people on both sides of the rift unfold, their interconnected lives branch out in unexpected patterns, shaped by brutal racist policies as well as by simple accidents of fate. Documentary history or gripping literature? One Life is both. A unique document, beautifully crafted, it re-creates the horrors of that time and transforms an overly interpreted past into an open present. Book jacket.