The Reader

The narrative skips to Michael’s time in law school. He goes to court to observe a trial and sees Hanna in the courtroom. He’s there for a university seminar about the Nazi past and current trials for war crimes. Michael doesn’t remember what they wanted to analyze, validate, or reject, but he recalls debates about how and when to apply laws to past periods.

In class, Michael and the other students consider themselves determined explorers. They don’t care about legal scholarships; they see themselves as bringing to light all the previously hidden horrors of the Third Reich. They are certain that the people who took part in the Nazi atrocities deserve conviction. They take pride in their awareness of the Holocaust’s ghastly details. The more aware they become, the more they want to punish their parents and the previous generation.

In court, Hanna is one of five female defendants. There are also three judges and six local citizens. Michael hears Hanna’s name and feels nothing. The court establishes Hanna’s birthday (October 21, 1922) and that she left the Siemens factory, even though she could have become an adviser, to voluntarily join the SS. The judge and the lawyer spat over wording, but Hanna’s lawyer is a young public defender—he’s not skilled. The lawyers for the other defendants might have Nazi pasts.

Hanna admits she knew the SS wanted to hire women guards. She admits she worked in Auschwitz and then in Kraków. She says she lived in Munich for eight years. The lawyer reminds the judge that Hanna always registered with the police. She’s not a flight risk and wonders why they are detaining her until the verdict. He links this behavior to Nazi law—their legal system detained people due to the supposed seriousness of the charges or the possibility that they might cause public unrest. The judge says Hanna ignored letters and summons from the court and does not release her. Michael wants Hanna to stay in a cell and out of his life.

Michael goes to the trial every day and closely watches Hanna. She holds her head erect when they discuss her and rolls her shoulders when she’s troubled. He notices her hair and birthmark and thinks about how he used to kiss her body, but he feels nothing. He’s numb, and he senses the other people in the courtroom are numb and tired, though the prosecutors doggedly enliven the atmosphere with emotional, ghastly accounts of Nazi atrocities.

The students who come once a week get their regular dose of horror, but Michael starts to feel like a prisoner. He’s used to the abominable environment and adopts an objective viewpoint. He sees the victims, the perpetrators, the dead, the living, and the survivors as entwined. He wonders what his generation should do about their awareness of the Holocaust: How should they confront the guilt and shame?

The five women on trial worked as guards at a Kraków labor camp for women. They used to work at Auschwitz, and one central charge is that they knowingly sent 60 women a month to Auschwitz for extermination. Another crucial charge involves a bombing around the Kraków camp that burned down a priest’s house where guards and troops slept. It also burned down a locked church full of several hundred female prisoners. The defendants could have unlocked the doors, but they didn’t.

The crucial witnesses to the church fire are a mother and daughter who survived. The court plans to travel to Israel to interview the mother. The daughter, who has written a book about her trauma, will testify in Germany.

Michael thinks the trial is going badly for Hanna. She changes her story. She says she had the key to the church but then says there were many keys to the church—all of them were outside in the locks. She claims people are trying to place all the blame on her. She doesn’t seem to understand that the trial is like a game with predetermined rules.

Hanna explains the selection process—all the guards took part. She admits they knew they were sending the women prisoners to death, but they had to—otherwise, there’d be no space for the new prisoners. Hanna asks the judge what he would have done if he had to select prisoners for extermination. The judge pauses and then provides an underwhelming answer. Hanna then asks if she shouldn’t have signed up for the SS. Michael thinks she directs this question at herself.

Michael thinks about how an effective lawyer could defend Hanna. They’d respectfully cast doubt on the testimony of the mother and daughter. How did they know the five defendants carried out the selections? The camp had a vast administrative apparatus. There was a commandant, additional male officials, and other female guards—any of them could have directed the selections. The mother and daughter also can’t testify about what happened outside the church—they were inside. The villager witnesses to the church fire are also questionable: Why didn’t they try to rescue the women in the church?

Hanna’s voluntary admissions make it hard for her and easy for the other defendants to blame her for the crimes. The defendants yell at Hanna and call her names. The daughter says Hanna picked young, weak prisoners and made them read to her each night. After the daughter’s revelation, Hanna looks at Michael. He wishes Hanna’s lawyer would ask her if she chose the vulnerable prisoners to protect them from the grueling labor—to try and make their last moments alive less agonizing. The lawyer is silent, and so is Hanna.

Although the German version of the daughter’s book doesn’t come out until after the trial, the manuscript is available to those in the trial. Later, Michael reads the book in English. The daughter doesn’t present the female guards or Nazis as individuals, and Michael wonders who Hanna might be. The book exudes numbness but not self-pity. It is sober and tells how the conditions at Kraków were better than at Auschwitz. It reveals the misery of the death marches, and the daughter graphically illustrates the church fire. Her mother didn’t want to be near the panicking women, so she and the daughter ran to a narrow gallery barely touched by the flaming beams.

The defendants claim they couldn’t unlock the church doors. They were in shock, busy, distracted, or hurt. The judge doesn’t believe them. He cites an SS report that names the wounded, the dead, and those who went to the field hospital. The defendants aren’t in the report, which suggests they stayed behind to keep watch over the burning church. The other defendants claim Hanna wrote the report. Hanna says she didn’t write the report: Everyone contributed to the document. She says they didn’t know what to do. They were overwhelmed. They could hear the screams. If they opened the door, the prisoners would have shot out. There’d be no order, and they could have escaped. For a second time, she asks the judge what he would have done.

The prosecutor suggests summoning a handwriting expert. Hanna becomes upset and confesses that she wrote the report.