A Guest at the Shooters’ Banquet: My Grandfather’s SS Past, My Jewish Family, A Search for the Truth
Rita Gabis, an American poet and writer of half-Catholic, half-Jewish descent, writes a memoir which is part mystery, part family history, part confession, and totally gut-wrenching. Five years prior to the publication of her book, Gabis was unaware of her beloved maternal grandfather’s work as the chief of security under the Gestapo in Svencionys, Lithuania. Once uncovered, she devoted years of her life to discover the truth about the killing grounds of Lithuania and her family complicity in the horror and tragedy that evolved there.
With prose in turns poetic and brutal, she goes into the history and politics of Lithuania, and explains the complications due to religious and ethnic differences. Gabis writes from her soul, trying to comprehend the terror of people under the heel of both the Nazis and the Russians, to understand there was no way out for so many, and no matter what the choice, it was always the wrong one.
This unsettling, unnerving book makes you think of the what-ifs of both the past and the present. Gabis touches so many who had never had the courage or ability to tell their stories, and those who had never heard them. This should be on everyone’s To Be Read list. It will make you examine your own conscience. Very highly recommended.
