Nein, Nein, Nein!

Starred review from April 25, 2022
“For Jews, lucky us, there’s always reason to rant and moan.... The gruesome stew of history is forever simmering,” writes novelist Stahl (I, Fatty) in this mordantly funny account of his two-week tour group through Nazi death camps in Poland and Germany. Plagued by a “bone-deep sadness” that began after his father’s suicide in his teens, led to multiple failed marriages, and turned him into an “adulterous, self-hating, narcissistic depresso,” Stahl decided in 2016 to embrace his feelings of desolation by taking a bus tour through “sites of unspeakable suffering where bone-deep despair... was what you were supposed to experience.” Though he concedes that approach was demented, the narrative—which jaunts from encountering antisemitic wooden souvenirs called “Lucky Jews” (“Put them by the door, so money won’t go out of the house,” the storekeeper insists) to visiting snack bars at Auschwitz—casts an illuminating if disturbing light on the profit-making ventures that have turned the Holocaust into “an industry” (“which is the travesty,” he wonders, “the eating or the forgetting?”). Still, Stahl’s bewilderment at the absurd reality around him doesn’t override his skillful capacity to use the “searing gravitas” of Nazi atrocities to confront his “own reflection in the hellhouse mirror.” Fusing provocative insights with razor-edged wit, this offers a captivating take on a haunting chapter of history.

Starred review from May 15, 2022
Gonzo meets the Shoah in this wildly irreverent--and brilliant--tour of Holocaust tourism. Convinced that the history of mass murder and total war is being reborn in the age of Trump and his "whole destroying-democracy and damning-future-generations thing," Stahl, best known for his drug-soaked memoir, Permanent Midnight, traveled to Poland and Germany. "I needed to go to Naziland," he explains. What he found, apart from the expected horrors, was a simple assault on good taste--e.g., a cafeteria in Auschwitz where tourists suck down kielbasa, dressed in the usual shorts-and-T-shirts uniform that marks them as rubes for all to see. The ghost of Hunter S. Thompson (who's invoked here) hovers in the wings, but Stahl is sui generis, with a refreshingly self-deprecatory edge ("Don't be an asshole," he tells himself) and a delightfully sharp tongue: "Hard not to imagine Steve 'I Financed Seinfeld' Mnuchin on Meet the Press: 'Say what you will about the Third Reich, they were big on infrastructure!' " Stahl knows his Holocaust history, sometimes more than his guide (who muttered loud enough for him to hear, "I hope you're not going to be my Jewish problem"), but he was also prepared to be surprised. When confronted with the enormity of Nazi crimes against humanity, he writes, "contemplation turns to paralysis, and you end up going nowhere, gripped by the moral equivalent of couch lock." The author doesn't hesitate to make pointed comparisons between Nazis and the members of the mob who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, "Trump's fecal lynch mob [who] bore chuckly logos like Camp Auschwitz." Stahl's takeaway is worth pondering: The Holocaust was no exception in history; instead, "It is the time between holocausts that is the exception. So savor these moments. Be grateful. Even if the ax is falling." A vivid, potent, decidedly idiosyncratic addition to the literature of genocide.

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