Portland Public Library

A guest at the shooters' banquet, my grandfather's SS past, my Jewish family, a search for the truth, Rita Gabis

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-435)

autobiography

illustrationsmaps

no index present

non fiction

A guest at the shooters' banquet

bibliography

919471179

Rita Gabis

my grandfather's SS past, my Jewish family, a search for the truth

"Gabis follows the trail of her grandfather's collaboration with the Nazis-- a trail riddled with secrets, slaughter, mystery, and discovery"--, Dust jacket"Rita Gabis comes from a family of Eastern European Jews and Lithuanian Catholics. She was close to her Catholic grandfather as a child and knew one version of his past: prior to immigration he had fought the Russians, whose brutal occupation of Lithuania destroyed thousands of lives before Hitler's army swept in. Five years ago, Gabis discovered an unthinkable dimension to her family story: from 1941 to 1943, her grandfather had been the chief of security police under the Gestapo in the Lithuanian town of Svencionys, near the killing field of Poligon, where eight thousand Jews were murdered over three days in the fall of 1941. In 1942, the local Polish population was also hunted down. Gabis felt compelled to find out the complicated truth of who her grandfather was and what he had done. Built around dramatic interviews in four countries, filled with original scholarship, and mesmerizing in its lyricism, A Guest at the Shooters' Banquet is a history and family memoir like no other, documenting "the holocaust by bullets" with a remarkable quest as Gabis returns again and again to the country of her grandfather's birth to learn all she can about the man she thought she knew"--Provided by the publisher

A small thing -- Faye Dunaway as an invaded country -- Word gets around -- Bad student -- It's Oprah's fault -- Introductions -- Fathers and sons -- An education -- Aunt Karina's pancakes -- War -- This kind of world -- A good get -- Our Anne Frank -- The human heart -- Water -- Yitzhak Arad -- Animals -- Mirele Rein/High Holidays -- Chaya Palevsky née Porus -- Messenger -- Lili Holzman -- Poligon -- Day of Mourning and Hope -- Artūras Karalis -- Lost -- Planners, diggers, guards, shooters -- Devil in a glass jar -- The translator -- Railroad town -- Elena Stankevičienė née Gagis -- Bucket -- Devil's auction -- Lucky bird -- Bad man/good man -- Shooter -- Inside/Outside -- A game of life and death -- Mistakes -- Anton Lavrinovich -- Josef Beck -- Illeana Irafeva -- Work -- Jump -- January 2014 -- Šakotis -- Gone -- Given Back -- Robin Fish -- Witnesses for the Prosecution -- The company we keep -- Only God Knows -- Memory