O Mágico de Auschwitz
(The Magician of Auschwitz)
Reviews
“I recently read The Magician of Auschwitz and The Birkenau Scrolls, and, despite having read hundreds of books on this subject, these two stand out. The author, José Rodrigues dos Santos, brings new information unknown to most people about what really happened in the extermination and forced labour camps. He brings to life the harsh conditions of daily life there. These are two heavyweight novels that manage to bring the reader into that living hell on Earth. They are worth every written word.”
Márcio Pitliuk, director Yad Vashem Brazil and curator of the Holocaust Memorial in São Paulo
“My first worry when I was given these novels to read was this one:
what would they tell me about the Holocaust that I did not know?
Nothing, surely. How wrong was I! These books bring a very different
and unorthodox approach. Instead of focusing on the voices of
Holocaust survivors, which is what everybody usually does, they
focus on the voices of the murdered ones. How does the author do
that?
The amazing thing is that he did not have to invent material to put
this across. He used authentic manuscripts by the survivors who
witnessed killings in the gas chambers and crematories as sources of
information. Who were these witnesses? They were the Jews selected
by the Nazis to aid them in the logistical process of the gassings.
This is a totally new perspective on the Holocaust. The author
provided a voice to those who had lost it. This is a harder effort,
and a unique one.
Simultaneously, it deals with a very uncomfortable side to the
Holocaust for a Jew like myself, which is the fact that there were
Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination
procedures. So we feel conflicted about these people: were they
victims or criminals? This is a subject largely ignored in
literature on the Holocaust. So these books have this new
perspective of showing us what happened from the point of view of
those murdered. This is an amazing and major contribution to
understand the Holocaust.
There is also a pace to the writing that is absolutely stunning. I
originally wondered: how can you deal with this subject? I found
genius in the very gradual unraveling of the story. From the outset,
all is well, flowers and poetry, but as we go, we keep descending
until, at the very end, we find ourselves in absolute darkness. The
way the story evolves is fascinating. I felt that I was being slowly
dragged to the bottom of a well. This was a very efficient way of
dealing with this subject. And this evolution into the abyss
involves not only suffering and humiliation, but also love, energy
and hope. It shows the best and the worst in human beings.
I was very impressed by the writing style too. I had never read
books by José Rodrigues dos Santos before. I was completely seduced
by the way he wrote these novels. When we read it, we enjoy each and
every word. I almost felt that I was reading a movie script. The
colours, the details of different languages and even accents, the
visual impact conveyed by the text, all this left me in wonder. It
was as if I was given a haute-cuisine dish filled with exquisite
tastes, a spice here, a spice there.
Rabbi Shlomo Pereira, director of Education at the Chabad, USA, and teacher of history, philosophy and canonic law
“It
seems fiction has found a new subject: The Holocaust. I, like
many people, and even the author as we shall see, felt some
reluctance in seeing this subject dealt in a novel. Fiction
demands freedom of imagination, but in this case, it requires a
respect for unimaginable facts.
In The
Magician of Auschwitz we
access the Nazi doctrinaire basis. Just like Hannah Arendt, José
Rodrigues dos Santos thrives to provide an explanation for the
absurd and tragic practice of evil carried out by common people, but
without excusing them.
In The Scrolls of Birkenau we face daily life in a death camp:
death lurking at every moment, hunger, cold, mud. These are pages of
suffering without tears in which we read the absurd of the
extermination of the Jews. I
actually advise readers to start at the Final Note of
The Scrolls of Birkenau,
where the author uses certified information to show that the
Sonderkommando members are real people and not fictional ones. The
reason they managed to withstand their experiences to the limit, was
because they hoped to share what they had seen, and name those who
died.
Madalena Barata, vice-president Luso Portuguese Association for Israel
“A skillful technician of literary art” (…) “J. R. dos Santos proposes a new vision on the Holocaust.”
Le Quotidien du Luxembourg, Luxemburg
“A very beautiful narrative about an episode of the Shoah.” (…) “No character is simple, we are here far from the angelical simplification of a Hollywood movie. There are no monsters, no innocents, but one or the other according to the circumstances: just human beings, caught by their weaknesses and their contradictions.” (…) “Often it reminds us of Roberto Begnini’s wonderful film, Life is Beautiful; this novel carries the same quality of ‘transfiguration’ of reality that allows us to endure it without betraying it. It reminds us also of László Nemes’ Sons of Saul, since this novel, in the same way, does not hesitate in diving into the heart of darkness to expose the extreme cruelty of the concentration camps universe. It reminds us, finally, of Primo Levi.” (…) José Rodrigues dos Santos shows very well how small and fragile is the frontier between white and black magic, myth and mumbo-jumbo, mysticism and superstition, and he reminds us how the Nazi ideology was based on a number of absurd beliefs bordering lunacy.”
Cultures Juives, France
Click here for the original critique in French.
“A well-researched novel that one easily reads until the very end. An extremely original story written in a troubling and addictive style.”
Radio Zinzine, France
“In this very good novel, a portrait of the unthinkable, Dos Santos progresses in velvet steps (...) We tremble, we shiver, we get scared, we become horrified when faced with Jewish daily life and the Nazi mysticism behind it. And we can only hope that this novel will get read by hundreds of thousands of readers.”
Le Soir, Belgium