The Memory Monster

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The narrator of Yishai Sarid's powerful novel is a young, initially reluctant Holocaust scholar working at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. A diligent historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II, and guides tours through the camps for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims' lives, and the process by which enslaved Jews were forced to dispose of the remains. The job becomes a mission, and then an addiction. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the mass murder committed by the Germans. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers -- their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill