A little bit of everything

Life is just full of ironies. This book is based on one of those.

Katrin Himmler would be a normal German woman, born in 1967, and graduated in political science, if it wasn’t the fact she was the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, the head of Hitler’s SS and one of the leaders of the Nazi regime.

In that fact lies the irony. Katrin is married to a Israeli jew.

After their son was born she decided to study in depth her grandfather, Ernst Himmler, and how was his relation with his older brother, Heinrich. Moreover, she wanted to understand and figure out how much was her grandfather involved in the genocide occurring while he was also a member of the SS. This book portrays the findings of that research.

Several years ago, as I was doing my MSc in the Univeristy of Reading, I developed a routine. I would fly to London early in the morning and so I would have a couple of hours in town before heading to Reading. Usually, I spent those hours in the Waterstones in Picadilly. Up till today I think it’s the finest bookstore in the world. And I’ve visited a few…

On one of those visits, I did the usual thing: I wandered around my favorite sections: History, Business, and Biographies; then I chose a couple of books that reasoned to me, and I began skimming through them; I sat on one of their comfortable sofas, and read introduction or the first couple of chapters of the books.

With the “Himmler Brothers” I read the introduction and the first chapter and couldn’t let it go. I had to buy it and continue reading it, which I did. In a couple of days I had finished the book.

If you’re interested in History and particularly in the Second World War, this book is for you. I find most interesting to read about historical figures.

The way I see it real life stories are much more interesting that fiction ones…