What does justice look like when memory is incomplete—or willfully ignored? In this episode of Gateway Books by Crestance, we delve into The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, a haunting novel set in postwar Germany that explores guilt, silence, and the generational weight of the Holocaust. As we trace the protagonist’s relationship with a woman hiding a devastating secret, we also examine real historical parallels.

Through Lethal Women: Tragic and Shocking Stories of Nazi Women of the Third Reich, we confront the unsettling truth that many women were not only bystanders but active participants in Nazi atrocities. And with Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, we grapple with the idea of the “banality of evil”—how ordinary people became instruments of a horrific system.

Together, these works lead us into a reflection on complicity, justice, and how societies remember—or misremember—the past.