Before I begin rambling about how awesome this book is, let me tell you that I am a big fan of everything that HMH Publishers release into the world. I have yet to meet a review copy that has completely disappointed me. The topics covered in their publications range from eccentric to emotional, in ways I still haven’t figured out how they pull off.
Plunder by Menachem Kaiser is one of the first non-fiction books I have read about the World War II where a tragic personal story is not the highlight of the book. I do read memoirs of people who survived the World War II with reverence, and frankly I never stepped out of my comfort zone for a while. But when I saw this review copy on Edelweiss+, I just had to get it and read it for myself.
The blurb of the book:
Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living?
While the book starts with the author’s quest to reclaim his family property, it ends up going down many Reddit-esque rabbit holes. The first rabbit hole we enter is the one where treasure hunters specifically search for memorabilia and treasure hidden by the Nazis in various regions of Poland. The blurb states the word Nazi treasure hunters, but unless ‘Nazi’ and ‘treasure’ is hyphenated, it gives a completely different picture – which is also the thought that the author experienced initially – why do these treasure hunters look for Nazi memorabilia and hidden treasure? Do they not respect the sanctity of the place where an uncountable number of Jews were tortured and murdered? But as we go through the story, and as the author tags along in various treasure hunting trips and explores havens of supposed treasure, he understands the psyche of the Nazi-treasure hunters.
Another rabbit hole of the book is the “judicial bureaucracy” in the Polish courts. While I wouldn’t like to spoil the ending of the book in my review, I would say that the end of this particular rabbit hole is pretty anti-climactic.
My most favourite part of this book is when the author finds out that his grandfather’s cousin had written a memoir about his time at the concentration camps. And that memoir was holy grail among Nazi-treasure hunters. There are a few translated excerpts from the memoir in the book as well. I also loved the chapter where we learn about Abraham Kaiser’s tragic rescue/love story. It is the one chapter that really drew me in. Also, the author’s way of narrating this incomplete-due-to-lack-of-context love story is very introspective too.
Though the book is factual, it doesn’t seem like a barrage of facts. And that makes the book relatively easy to read – if you can manage to give yourself breaks in between paragraphs in these long-ass chapters. Despite the lengthiness of the book (it took me a whole two months to read it), the narrative is heartfelt. The author writes in a deeply introspective fashion about everything that happened to him during his stay in Poland, while overlooking the process of reclaiming his family’s apartment building. The deep introspection gives way to fourth-wall breaking questions, which do give the reader a chance to sit and reflect about what exactly is happening in the book, and would the reader have made the same choices that the author made, if they were in the author’s shoes?
Leave a Reply