Forgetting is so easy.

Big numbers depersonalize tragedy. We cannot really comprehend the murder of millions, especially now that 75 years have gone by. It is hard to miss a void.

That is what makes books like the one reviewed here so important. It is the concreteness of detail, the experience of individual lives, that red-flags the lurking viciousness and cruelty of which human nature is capable. There are the lessons we must not forget.

Imagine spending seven years in daily fear of death; of being locked up in a detention camp, only then, equally arbitrarily, to be let to because one is over 55. Then imagine reaching a place of comparative safety, only to be arrested under a new law that says that's what happens to those who got there after a certain date.

All perfectly legal.

Then imagine living in a closet in an asylum.

All this happened to a man and his wife, and the servant who refused to leave them.