YFAAT WEISS
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about the second generation-the German version. The protagonist is
Michael, a fifteen-year-old boy, who at the end of the
1950S,
in Ger–
many, gets embroiled in a f1irtation-cum-love affair with Hanna, then
thirty-six years old. The insignificant affair between the young boy and
the mature woman takes a dramatic turn when, six years later,
Michael-by this time a law student-meets Hanna again: but this time
Hanna is not the woman who took his erotic world by storm, but one
of the defendants in a trial of SS women who worked in a concentration
camp near Cracow who, by the end of the trial, had become the primary
accused.
The plot is fictitious, but Schlink's book tries to grope its way into the
minds of the German second generation. Schlink, a professor of law,
was born in
1944.
He wants to both understand and condemn the Nazi
past. His book is innocent of revisionism; it does not question the crim–
inal nature of the Nazis' actions. But it disputes the second generation'S
sweeping condemnation of the generation of the perpetrators. The
ambivalence which haunts Michael in his emotional and physical
encounters with Hanna-varying between knowing about her actions
and attraction to her--constitutes a general metaphor for the relation–
ships between the generations. Hanna, as the reader comes to learn, pre–
ferred to join the SS instead of being promoted at the Siemens
company-because this promotion would have exposed the fact that she
was illiterate. Her need to hide this handicap was greater than any eth–
ical yardstick or other internal moral conflict. The feeling of shame
about her illiteracy and the terror of discovery were what made Hanna
assume responsibility in the course of the trial for actions which she had
not carried out. Hanna is a victim of her youth in the first stage, and of
the postwar legal system in the second stage. Michael is also a victim, a
victim of this impossible love, which casts a deep shadow over his life,
blunting his senses and leaving him emotionally barren.
To date, Bernhard Schlink's book has sold fifteen thousand copies in
Israel, making it an Israeli bestseller. But, it is extremely difficult to know
how Israelis read it. The few reviews that appeared in Israeli literary sup–
plements manifested much interest. One of the critics even noted with
satisfaction that the level of sales testifies "to a welcome contrast
between the political world and our literary republic. In Israeli politics,"
he noted, "the position of victim is a spot much in demand, competed for
by every public activist, every party, every sector, and every religious
group." The fact that the Israeli public is prepared to read with interest
a book constructed on the recognition that you yourself are a passive
partner in crime, that you are the criminal, was presented in the eyes of
