Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:25, 2 December 2007

Gitta Sereny (born March 13 1921) is a Hungarian-born British biographer, historian and journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and abused children. She is a stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises.

Biography

Sereny was born a Hungarian in Vienna, Austria in 1921. She read Hitler's Mein Kampf at the age of 13 and heard him address a rally in Vienna four years later. After the Nazi takeover of Austria she moved to France were she worked with refugee children until the German occupation when she fled to the United Kingdom. After World War II she worked for the UN with refugees in occupied Germany. Among her tasks was reuniting children who had been kidnapped by the Nazis to be raised as "Aryans" with their biological families. This could be a traumatic experience because the children did not always remember their original family.

She attended the Nuremberg trials for four days in 1945 as an observer and it was here that she first saw Albert Speer about whom she would later write the book Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. It was for this book that she was awarded the 1995 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The Case of Mary Bell

The Case of Mary Bell was first published in 1972 following Mary Bell's trial; in it Sereny interviewed her family, friends and the professionals involved in looking after Mary during her trial.

In 1998 she was embroiled in a controversy in the British press when her second book on Mary Bell, Cries Unheard was published and she announced that she was sharing the publishing fee, from MacMillan Publishers, with Mary Bell for collaborating on the book. Sereny was initially criticized in the British press and by the British government, though the book quickly became, and remains, a standard text for professionals working with problem children.

David Irving libel case

British historian and accused Holocaust denier David Irving initiated a libel case against Sereny and the Guardian Media Group for two reviews in The Observer where she dismissed some of his historical claims. Irving maintains an especial disdain for Sereny who he calls "that shriveled Nazi hunter". Although the case has not gone to court the cost to The Observer for preparing their legal defense amount to £800,000.

Fictitious Fabrications of Ms.Sereny

An unfortunate number of historical writers write to an idea, disregarding inconvenient facts and simply creating their own reality to suit their needs.

A classic example of this latter case is to be found in a work by Hungarian-American author, Gitta Sereny. It first appeared in 1974 and was entitled Into That Darkness. This work purports to be based on an interview with Franz Stangl, an alleged SS officer who ran a camp in occupied Poland during the war where many prisoners were later stated to have been gassed. The book contains a lengthy section quoting Stangl, who according to Sereny’s version, fully admits his part in the purported killings and asks for forgiveness from God and his victims. The balance of the work consists of various supplementary testimonies from former associates and family members, all attesting to the evil nature of Stangl’s activities and all clearly acknowledging his willing cooperation in a state-sponsored program of genocide.

Unfortunately for Sereny's thesis, Franz Stangl was not an SS officer or even a member of the SS, as a check of the copies of the SS personnel records now in the U.S. National Archives will clearly disclose. Further, Stangl was an Austrian policeman and not a camp commandant.

Sereny, it should be noted, has made a comfortable living writing books and articles dealing with holocaust killings. But this particular book shows with great clarity the pitfalls that occur when a journalist, as opposed to a legitimate academic historian, produces a work which is not only entirely anecdotal in content, but ideological in thrust. There is no documentation, whatsoever, in this work which relies almost entirely on the author’s purported interviews with various people. Stangl died on the day following Sereny’s visit to him in prison where he was appealing his life sentence.

Herein lies the key to the questionability of the entire book. Stangl had been sentenced to a life term in prison as the result of his easily-foreseen conviction as a camp commander. He, through his attorneys, was appealing this sentence. It is highly doubtful if either Stangl or his attorneys would permit such a damaging interview to take place and to permit Sereny, whose extremist views were well known, free and unfettered access to the prisoner. There would appear to be no question that Sereny and her photographer husband, Don Honeyman, did indeed visit the prison and did see Stangl. Sereny’s husband took several photographs of him, photographs which are extensively reproduced in the book. The published pictures, however, do not support statements alleged to have been made by the former Austrian police officer, but merely prove that he permitted himself to be photographed by his visitors. By making such incriminating statements as Sereny placed, post mortem, in his mouth, Stangl would have irrevocably destroyed any chance he might have had in his pending appeal before the German courts.

It is beyond reasonable belief that such statements were made under the circumstances indicated. A dead Stangl, however, could comfortably be alleged to have made any statement that the author chose to put into his mouth, and without the possible embarrassment to her or her publisher of an instant denial or possible legal proceedings.

A careful reading of the book not only disclosed the author’s prejudice towards Stangl and the system he served, but also is entirely devoid of any facts to support her thesis. She notes that a number of witnesses died before the book was published, of course including her main source, Stangl. Much of the anecdotal material Sereny has put together to support her case is of such a nature as to preclude its ever being introduced in a court of law. A prime example is set forth as an illustration.

Sereny claims that Stangl’s wife wrote her a letter following an interview Sereny had with the wife in Brazil. In this letter, which is not reproduced, Frau Stangl allegedly states that in 1945 she was interviewed by two members of the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence agency, and that they knew of her husband’s whereabouts in an American jail. “I examined their papers,” she is quoted as writing, “I have no doubt whatever that they were genuine.” The flaw in this scenario is obvious. It is simply not believable that the wife of an obscure police officer would have the slightest idea what “genuine” U.S. CIC identification papers looked like. But Sereny states that the woman would have no reason to invent the incident. Perhaps the invention did not originate with Stangl’s wife, but with the author herself.

It is anecdotal and imaginative material, at charitable best, that suffuses and supports the entire untenable structure of this work. Unfortunately, a large proportion of what purports to be important historical studies are based either on entirely faked documents or on the wishful thinking of mendacious and ideological journalists. Generations must pass before the fictive is eventually weeded out from the factual, and in the meantime an appellation which has been applied to the Sereny book, Dialogs with the Dead, could well be applied to other mendacious creative writing essays herein studied.

Honors and education

In the 2004 New Years Honours List Sereny was awarded a CBE for services to Journalism, which she received at a special ceremony at the Foreign Office.

Bibliography

Educated in England and France in addition to her Austrian schooling, her writings include:

• The Case of Mary Bell: A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered (1972, second edition 1995)
• Into That Darkness: from Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, a study of Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka (1974, second edition 1995)
• The Invisible Children: Child Prostitution in America, West Germany and Great Britain (1984)
• Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995)
• Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell (1998)
• The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections, 1938-2001 (2002)

The second edition of The Case of Mary Bell contains an appendix on the murder of James Bulger.

External links

• BBC biography
• Spike Magazine Interview
• Review of Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth in Foreign Affairs

• Hungarian writers
• 1921 births
• Living people
• Fascist/Nazi era scholars and writers