Fatelessness [Paperback]

 

 

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I have struggled for my entire life to understand how the Holocaust could have happened; how countries like the United States and Britain turned their backs on Jews desperately trying to escape the pogroms; how one of the oldest and most civilized countries in the world could, within 10 years, reduce one segment of its citizens to vermin suitable only for extermination, with the knowledge and complicity of its entire population.
I was illuminated by an exchange early in "Fateless" between the narrator and a young Jewish girl anguished by the racism she is experiencing. He uses Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper" as an analogy for the anonymity of racism. He tells her about "a beggar and a prince who resembled each other so closely in face and form that one couldn't tell them apart. Out of mere curiosity they exchanged identities, until finally the beggar became a genuine prince and the prince a genuine beggar."
Soon enough, the narrator's passage through the circles of hell in the concentration camps provides us with a chilling glimpse of how quickly and completely ordinary people can assume the roles bestowed on them -- either as "an SS officer with a whip," or as "a Jew destined for slaughter."
The smiling, avuncular policeman plucking Jewish boys off the bus says he likes to deal with "intelligent boys," and as the group of boys grows, they "circled him in a completely uninhibited manner, laughing, just as if we were schoolboys with a teacher on a field trip."
"I was confident that he liked us," the narrator says. "He was also very pleasant."
How softly charming, how gently sloping, is this beginning of an entire civilization's descent into hell.
Now, let's play substitution. Instead of "SS guard" and "Jew," how about "Nigeria" and "woman"? (If you're female, you'll get stoned to death for adultery there.) How about "CIA" and "democratically elected Central American government"? How about "Iraq" and "Kurd"? "Serb" and "Croat"? Or "U.S. oil interests" and "Iraq", for that matter?
Change the name, but the game remains the same. If you're looking for another graphic insight into the Holocaust, you're reading the wrong book. If you're willing to examine the worm-ridden underbelly of human nature, read "Fateless." This is an unblinking look at how easily we humans can become "genuine" racists or "genuine" victims, even though we "resemble each other so closely" that there are more DNA variations between members of the same race than between different races (a scientific fact revealed by the unraveling of the human genome).
It's hard to find any rationale for the brutalities we have committed, and continue to commit, on each other throughout the world. This book helps me to understand this dark side of human nature, this ease with which many of us can wear the bland face of evil or of compliance, given enough incentive. And that incentive, of course, is survival at any cost.

This is the most shocking book about the Holocaust I know. What makes the book so unique is the narrator, a 15-year-old Hungarian Jew whose language reminded me of Salinger in the beginning. The perspective of this naive boy allows Kertesz to describe the narrator's and his father's deportation without any idea of what's going to happen next. - Kertesz experienced much of this in his own life, and yet he had enormous trouble getting the book published. It was regarded as a scandal that the hero says that even in the concentration camps he experienced moments of happiness. This does not mean, however, that Kertesz makes it appear to be fairly harmless in the manner of "Life is Beautiful". No, his perspective, which is free from any hindsight makes us see the Shoa in all its horror for the first time.

I read this book a few hears ago in original language (hungarian) and I really enjoyed it. It is very very powerfull and I recommend it to anybody...

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5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding
After so many books and discussions with people who were alive at the time of WWII, reading Fateless I finally understood how such things could have come to happen, and how so... Read more

Published on Mar 23 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-Provoking
This book, although morbid (let's face it, it's about the Holocaust) is spellbinding. The perspective and the conclusions drawn regarding the Holocaust are unexpected and... Read more

Published on Jan 26 2004 by J Osorio

2.0 out of 5 stars Ok, I suppose, but hardly justifies a Nobel Prize. . . .
Fateless is the story of a 13-year-old Jewish boy who is deported to a series of German concentration camps including Aushwitz, Buchenwald, and Zeitz. Read more

Published on Jan 22 2004 by Thomas

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh, Amazing, and Deeply Touching
I expected this book to be a tad boring, and just another account of a concentration camp prisoner. Boy, was I in for a treat! Read more

Published on Dec 5 2003 by Juan C Villamil

4.0 out of 5 stars Loss of Innocence
I thought the way this book was written makes it worthy of your attention. The story starts off with a very naive view of the world, which is understandable because it's told... Read more

Published on Nov 4 2003 by Nelson

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
This is a fascinating book. So many interesting aspects to the story that it's difficult to describe. Read more

Published on Oct 19 2003 by Thomas B. Gross

5.0 out of 5 stars The most original work within Holocaust literature
Imre Kertesz's FATELESS ("Sorstalansag") is a remarkable and original work within the harrowing field of Holocaust literature. Read more

Published on Sep 16 2003 by Christopher Culver

5.0 out of 5 stars A teenager's experience in Auschwitz and Buchenwald
I read it in English and then in Hungarian. Yes,indeed the original reads better but the criticism of the English translation (by a "friend" of the author) is quite... Read more

Published on Aug 26 2003 by David Drori Dr

5.0 out of 5 stars To Hell And Back!
Imre Kertesz has truly created a masterpiece. As indicated by his 2002 Nobel Prize for his life's work, the Nobel Committee thought so as well. Read more

Published on July 15 2003 by Jon Linden

4.0 out of 5 stars Matter-of-fact, detached, unsentimental p-o-v on the Shoah
Like Louis Begley's Wartime Lies, Jiri Weil's Life With a Star, and Erno Szep's The Smell of Humans, Fateless presents another eyewitness look at the camps. Read more

Published on May 25 2003 by John L Murphy

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