(Jewish Group) A writer faces his demons -- and history's -- on a guided tour of Holocaust sites
“This isn’t hell,” Jerry Stahl writes. “This is the Museum of Hell.”
“This” is Auschwitz, and Stahl’s epiphany comes about halfway through his new book “Nein, Nein, Nein!” (Akashic Books), his nonfiction account of a two-week bus tour in 2016 of concentration camps in Poland and Germany.
Stahl is no stranger to dark places: A novelist and screenwriter, he is best known for his 1995 memoir, “Permanent Midnight,” a harrowing account of his heroin addiction and the calamity he made of his first marriage and television career in 1980s Hollywood. (Ben Stiller starred as Stahl in the 1998 film adaptation.) In this case, Stahl, 68, is not just one of the few Jews on the guided tour of hell but perhaps the least enthusiastic tourist ever to squeeze into a bus seat: He joined the trip at a low point in his marriage, career and mental and physical health. “Via my group tour,” he writes, “I hoped that I could once more find relief in a situation where feeling miserable was appropriate.”
But while “Nein, Nein, Nein!” is darkly confessional, it is also an exploration of how we remember the Holocaust and whether it is even possible to properly mourn and honor the victims of unspeakable tragedy. He joins the crowds as they stand before the gas chambers, and as they later line up for pizza at the camps’ snack bars. The result is a sort of gonzo travel book about the ways the Holocaust is memorialized, commercialized and trivialized in the countries where it took place.
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