secondhand Roua Mat book like new

Like new • Language: Greek

#historicalfiction • #literaryfiction • #wwiistory • #chessnovel • #john_donoghue

Checkmate

Auschwitz Concentration Camp, 1944
SS officer Paul Meissner, to boost the morale of the men serving at the Auschwitz camp, decides to set up a chess club.

When he learns that the prisoners also play chess among themselves, he becomes curious about the rumor of a Jewish watchmaker, Emil Kleman, who is considered unbeatable.

He then has him compete against the best SS chess players in the camp, and Emil, for whom chess is not just a mental game, ends up playing for the lives of his fellow inmates, gradually earning the respect of the German officer.

Amsterdam, 1962
As part of an official chess tournament, former Auschwitz prisoner Emil Kleman, who believes there are no good Germans, meets Wilhelm Sweniger, a former member of the Nazi Party and an employee of the German Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during World War II.

Almost twenty years after the war, the two men end up remembering and discussing each one's side of the story, and an unexpected friendship, previously unimaginable, begins to develop between them.

A story about reconciliation, forgiveness, and ultimately redemption.

Emil searches for his friend's eyes, as if hoping for forgiveness.

"I fear I have been tainted by their corruption. If I am to remember this day, it will be to say that it was a day I played chess. You ask too much of me when you tell me to remember this – this horror."

Ivo takes his friend's hands in his own.

"You must not think like that. The shame is not yours, but theirs. They do it because we mean nothing to them. We have no value. We are not even human beings anymore. That is the truth here."

Emil is not satisfied.

"How did we become so unworthy?"

"Don't you understand, Emil? You are so focused on the unreal, mysterious world of pawns and kings that you do not see that we are traveling towards non-existence?"