The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt

In 1992, Ryback wrote a New Yorker article about the picturesque Bavarian town of Dachau, site of the first Nazi concentration camp, in which he ""roundly condemned the residents of Dachau as small-minded and selfish, unwilling to accept moral responsibility for their town's role in the Holocaust."" In retrospect, however, he felt that he had too casually adopted the moral high ground. So he went back to talk with Dachau's mayor and its journalists, waitresses and policemen, members of a community living normal lives in a place that reeks of historical atrocity. His portraits reveal the various ways Dachauers confront or evade the ugly history of their hometown (many pregnant women deliver in Munich so their children won't have the stain of Dachau on their birth certificates). Yet the voices of these people are ultimately obscured by the enigmatic man Ryback places at the moral center of the book: Martin Zaidenstadt, who may very well be crazy. Every day, Zaidenstadt goes to the camp to rebut the official history given by tour guides and historians. While Dachauers take a bizarre pride that the historical record shows that the gas chambers were never used at the camp, Zaidenstadt has made it his mission in life to tell visitors, in as many languages as he can, that Jews were, in fact, gassed at Dachau and that he saw it with his own eyes. Though Ryback's archival searches never confirm that Zaidenstadt was ever at Dachau, the author is happy to grant the old man his moral authority. In doing so, he implies that there should, after all, be no exit from history for Dachau. Pensive digressions into his own family history and thoughtful responses to what he sees in Dachau make Ryback an appealing guide. Zaidenstadt is so haunting a figure, however, that his presence overwhelms whatever insight Ryback has to offer into the soul of Dachau's present. (Aug.)