Into That Darkness
Seventy hours of prison interviews with Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka — ending days before his death.
The Verdict
The deepest interrogation of a perpetrator ever conducted. Over seventy hours of prison interviews, Gitta Sereny drew out Franz Stangl — commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp — toward the admission of responsibility he had spent decades evading. The result is a study of how a man talks himself into administering mass murder and how he lives with it afterward, more chilling than any catalogue of atrocity because it is so patiently, humanly close. Essential for understanding how the Holocaust was possible.
Who Should Read It
Read it if you want
- The definitive study of a Holocaust perpetrator
- How genocide is administered
- A rigorous, psychologically penetrating account
- The companion to Ordinary Men and Eichmann in Jerusalem
Look elsewhere if you want
- A survivor's perspective
- Narrative history of the camps
- A consoling or hopeful read
Why We Rated It 4.7
Historical Context
Franz Stangl commanded Treblinka, where some 900,000 people were murdered. Convicted in 1970, he gave Sereny extensive interviews shortly before his death in prison. Her 1974 book combines those conversations with wider documentation of the Nazi extermination programme.
Events Covered
Editions & Reading Notes
Read It Alongside
Where to Buy
ISBN: 978-0394710358
Read This Against
The same events seen from a different vantage point. The fullest understanding often lives in the space between accounts that don't agree.
Other Books About the Same Events
Frequently Asked Questions
- Who was Franz Stangl?
- The commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, where roughly 900,000 people were murdered. Sereny interviewed him at length after his 1970 conviction.
- What makes the book significant?
- Its sustained, probing access to a perpetrator's mind — it traces how an ordinary man came to administer mass murder and how he rationalised it.