A Jew Must Die [Kindle Edition]

Short but incredibly moving. I finished this in one sitting and it was very thought provoking. Instead of seeing the holocaust in terms of concentration camps and gas chambers, we see the story of a very ordinary man, slaughtered, in a peaceful town in Switzerland. The beautiful backdrop sharply contrasts with the horrors that man is capable to commit. It also shows the strength and impact of Hitler's regime on seemingly remote parts of the world.

Often the story of one person can be so much more effective and moving than facts, figures and numbers. We must also strive to see history and events from many different points of view. In this way we can learn more about humanity and peoples' actions in different circumstances.

Jacques Chessex gives us here a pared down and to some part dispassionate view of a true story. His writing like this gives more immediacy and greater emphasis on the story. Once again he has crafted something here that has caused some controversy in his homeland, as he peers deep into the dark corners of Switzerland's past.

The tale takes place in 1942 where there is anti-semitism in Switzerland and groups of activists are creating a fifth front in preparation for the day that Nazi Germany invades. Switzerland is on a state of war preparedness, after all in those dark days no one knew whether Switzerland would be invaded. One group of these activists led by Fernand Ischi set out to make an example of a Jew. The poor man chosen is Arthur Bloch, an aging partly deaf cattle trader, who is quite popular. Tricking him to come and see a cow that they want to sell, Bloch is bludgeoned to death on 16th April 1942. What can be seen as blackly comic is how this Nazi cell go about to hide the body. With an action like this that is supposed to be political you can only but wonder why the body needed to be concealed, surely the point is for it to be prominently displayed somewhere to cause attention and terror. Ultimately of course the perpetrators are caught and Ischi openly admits of the murder, and he along with his cohorts are sentences to prison.

While the Swiss population are making anti-Semitic jokes etc you see that when something like this happens there is disgust amongst the majority. The whole act seems to become rather pointless, as Arthur Bloch's death didn't cause a storm of anti-Jewish attrocities, the Germans were never in a position where they could invade, and the perpetrators all went to prison.

Chessex was eight when this happened and he sat in class next to Ischi's daughter, the commanding police officer had a child in the school as well as the judge who would unltimately sentence those accused. Chessex' own father was on a hit list if the culprits had managed to escape justice as he was an anti-Nazi. This is quite a powerful little novella that will make you think about how such things as anti-Semitism arise and how people end up taking drastic action.

This novella tells the story of a Jew murdered by (Swiss) Nazi sympathisers in a Swiss town in 1942. The style is deceptively simple, the profundity immense. It explores both the psychology and sociology of anti-semitism, and the attraction of (extreme) right-wing ideologies to those who are bitter about their lot in life is revealed with a clarity unparalleled anywhere else. That one's neighbour, given certain historical circumstances, can be one's killer, is a chilling phenomenon evidenced not only in the Nazi epoch, but also in the Spanish Civil War, Bosnia and Rwanda, to name but a few examples. As Erich Fromm pointed out, there as a potential Himmler in every office. That this is the case, and that there are many people prepared to turn into killers given the opportunity is revealed here with stark simplicity. This novella is thus also a deeply-felt, anguished lament at the depths of evil to which humanity has sunk in our troubled times. It's a unique book, and as a previous reviewer has commented, you'll pick it up and finish it in a single sitting. Although you'll ponder it for much longer.