A Cracked House: My Youth Under Hitler

In 1965, journalist Horst Krüger attended the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, where 22 former camp guards were being tried for the extermination of nearly a million people—elderly people, women, and children. The trial prompted Krüger to remember his childhood and youth in the 1930s, when the Nazi regime was gaining strength. He grew up in a quiet one-story suburb of Berlin, where people lived with steady everyday life, followed the law, and believed in God. He was a typical child of respectable, apolitical Germans—who had never been Nazis, but without whom the Nazis could not have carried out their atrocities. Step by step, Hitler’s regime destroys the country—and with it, Krüger’s own family. Originally published in 1966, “The Shattered House” is an astonishing mixture of reportage, essays, and memoirs—painful and at the same time bold attempt to raise questions about collective trauma, memory, and responsibility. Skillfully written and bringing the author literary fame, the book shows “the spirit of the times” and draws an impartial portrait of a generation under the Third Reich.