Review: "Sobibor" by Jean Molla

Sobibor by Jean Molla, translated from the French by Polly McLean
English translation published 2005
★★★

Spoilers below

Pulled this one from deep deep down on my TBR, and it's an odd one. Part YA eating disorder story, part Holocaust story. Emma's anorexia/bulimia serve as...something of a penance, plus something of a visible sign of shame, I think? The timeline was a little confusing, but the short of it is that she discovers a Holocaust-era diary that her late grandmother had stashed away; the diary is written by a French Nazi sympathizer (and Nazi himself), and the more Emma reads the more she questions what she knows about her grandmother: in addition to what Emma learns through the diary (in which her grandmother makes appearances), why did she have this diary, and who was this man to her?

I'm not sure quite what to do with this. The comparison of the body of someone who is very sick with anorexia (and yes, Emma is very sick) to a person who survived—or, for that matter, didn't survive—the Holocaust is not a new one, but here it's a bit more literal. But...when Emma eventually works out the details, she understands that the writer of the diary, despite the different name, is her grandfather. There's a whole confrontation, and it just feels odd—like someone's (the writer's?) fantasy of, well, confronting a Nazi.

It would be interesting to see this spread out over more time. Most of Emma's reaction, other than the confrontation, is confined to her relationship with food and her body. But...I'd have liked to see her really wrestle with what this means for her memories of not just her grandfather but also her grandmother. Her grandfather gets the brunt of the blame, as well he should (he's the one who happily worked at a death camp and who, somewhat less happily, committed murder himself); her grandmother, who is dead by the time Emma is working all of this out, gets less attention. But she's in many ways the more interesting character: she was at the camp as forced labor from Poland, and her relationship with Emma's grandfather meant survival...but the fact that she stayed with him after the war, buried his secrets, is something separate, and I don't think the book really gives enough room for Emma to work all of that out.