Took a while to see it as a novel and make the connections between the three stories but a breathtaking commentary on living in Germany during the war and what it meant to be identified as a Nazi or to have it in your family history. It does not blame but helps to explain and understand. Also some fantastic writing and some great one-liners. ( )

I kind of disliked the writing style, once someone pointed it out to me, but the stories were fine. I read it in a trauma theory class, and I'm kind of highly critical about its resonance as history and historical fiction, but I like what it tries to accomplish and I think it does what it wants to do. Helmut was by far the best story, but the other ones weren't bad. All in all, a decent read. ( )

There are many books which were written about World War II and the effects of it on the second and third generation of survivors: from missing relatives to the secrets surrounding the families. "The Dark Room" written by Rachel Seiffert, a daughter of a German mother and an Austrian father, presents a new perspective. This book is composed of three novellas and introduces the reader to the effects of the Second World War on the Germans and their descendants. Particular emphasis placed on the murder of the Jews as part of the war - the Holocaust.

The book confronts the progeny and the reader with the question of the responsibility of the offspring for the actions of their parents. The book raises the question of how much the children and grandchildren of the Germans should bear responsibility and the consequences of actions they didn't commit themselves. The book exposes the reader to the guilt and confusion of those who discovered that their loved ones were involved in terrible deeds.

The "dark room" and the family photos presented during the three novellas and the book's construction play an essential role for the reader. These pictures displayed along a timeline: during the war, a little later and in our later days.

This is a fascinating and challenging book, the writing is beautiful and attractive, and despite its complex issue, it's difficult not to break away from the problematic context sometimes and sail in a terrible imagination as if it were a story that didn't happen.

***It's important to remember that the debate over intergenerational responsibility for actions that cannot have influence or responsibility can still take place in contemporary contexts. Bloody conflicts all over the world raise the question of whether those who were children during the war should pay for their parents' actions. ( )

'How do you tell the difference? When he's Opa and when he's a Nazi?', 30 Dec. 2013
By
sally tarbox

This review is from: The Dark Room: World War 2 Fiction (Paperback)
Three utterly engrossing short stories, set in Germany and - unusually - looking at the War from a German perspective. In the first, a disabled young man lives a solitary life, working in a photography shop while his peers go off to fight... The middle story follows a young girl, shepherding her young siblings through post-war Germany to find her grandmother, when her Nazi parents are imprisoned...While the final, and perhaps most heart-rending, is set in the modern day, and concerns a young teacher trying to find out and come to terms with the truth about his grandfather, once a member of the SS stationed in Belorussia:
"Micha shuts the photo album, tells himself, he was a soldier, but in his head he inserts the photos from the museum. Thick pages; a whole album of atrocities between the honeymoon and the newborn boy." ( )

I've read a couple of novels that lacked dialogue and they didn't work. The first chapter of this is proof that it can be done; it must just be very difficult. When the dialogue does come in the second chapter it's presented idiosyncraticly and made me relished how unnecessary speech marks and attribution are, in the right hands.

That first chapter is beautiful, like a series of silent snapshots. There's some very subtle and clever writing in the second chapter. Overall, I think there was something missing from the novel, and having read her later, and far superior, novel, Afterwards, I know it's a central character, a nexus, to bind the tricolon together. Still, she gets an extra star for tackling such a difficult subject. ( )