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"The true story of nineteen-year-old Jordana Lebowitz's experience attending the war criminal trial of Oskar Groening. Groening worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp and became known as the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz." In 2015 he stood trial in Germany for being complicit in the deaths of more than 300,000 Jews. A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Jordana had travelled to Europe to visit Auschwitz. But she was not prepared for what she would see and hear at Oscar Groening's trial, including how such an ordinary seeming man--who at first glance reminded her of her grandfather--could be part of such despicable cruelty. Listening to Groening's testimony and to the Holocaust survivors who came to testify against him, Jordana came to understand that by bearing witness she gained the knowledge and legitimacy to stand in the footsteps of the survivors and to pass their history on to the next generation."--… (more)
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To Look a Nazi in the Eye is a Canadian university student's eyewitness account of the trial of Oskar Groening, charged with complicity in the deaths of over 300,000 Jews in Auschwitz. The granddaughter of Holocaust
This is a quick read, and an important one, for the historical context and its representation of a new generation of involvement in Holocaust-related accountability. However, the stilted writing style and unnatural choice of framing this in a third-person narrative detracted from such an influential story. The brief snippets of Jordana's blog posts that she penned while attending the trial have a stronger pull than the disconnected writing of the book and I think a heavier reliance on her original voice would have offered a more compelling, and less detached, narrative. Jordana's experience is unique and powerful, but unfortunately this account does not do her, nor her story, justice.