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Thank you for that, Liehtzu. I thank my lucky stars that I live in an era where you don't have to join the Resistance to survive. I have a moving book in Polish, which I have been thinking for years about translating, but probably exists in English by now, about the Yiddish poet Avrom (or Abraham) Sutzkever, who, like Sempr?n, fought in the Resistance. But Sutzkever fought in the Vilnius (Wilno, Vilne) ghetto, not in Spain.

I can't agree with Sempr?n, even though I've not read the book, and Sempr?n has suffered by being incarcerated in Buchenwald, which gives him the advantage of experience over me. From what I've read, Littell wallows in the sadistic aspects. I don't think that this book will help younger generations understand what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil" and other matters. Such an understanding must occur so that such atrocities do not happen again.

Too many journalists also wallow in the Holocaust, knee deep, like the more emotionally crippled ones wallow in school shootings, describing every little detail. Much of Assaf Uni's article in Ha'aretz is interesting, but I don't like the obsession with clothes:

Littell, 41, strode onto the low stage wearing the pale suit that has become a sort of trademark of his public appearances. The last time the American-European author was in Berlin, some three months ago, when the German edition was published, he wore a similar suit and a light scarf around his neck; he held a glass of whiskey and smoked a Dutch cigarillo. The German press called him a "dandy." This time, in a non-smoking space, Littell - who had arrived that afternoon from Barcelona, where he lives with his wife and two children - looked more like a serious young historian than an enigmatic writer. In his introduction, the museum's director noted that Hitler himself had stood on a similar platform to review military parades. This is real celebrity fetishism of the worst kind.

Reading some of the more enlightened things that this Ha'aretz journalist Assaf Uni plus German Holocaust scholars also say in that same review, Littell seems to be cashing in on the Holocaust. We'll soon see what Israel makes of it, now it's been translated into Hebrew.

At the end of that Ha'aretz article, there are a lot of readers' comments. I've not read them yet, but it will be instructive to read what the centre-left of Israeli opinion has to say. (The more right-wing English-language Israeli online newspapers are the Jerusalem Post and Y-Net.)

You will note that this slippery character avoids being a Jew himself. Littell says in that Ha'aretz interview:

"Whereas my dad spent World War II trying to find something to eat in Brooklyn and thinking, 'if I was in Europe now, the Nazis would kill me.' So he looks at things from the point of view of the victim. It's a generational thing."

Would you define yourself as a Jew?

"Not at all."

Does your father define himself as a Jew?

"More than I do. I never went to synagogue regularly. In fact, I think I have been in more churches than synagogues. For me, Judaism is more a historical background. My father says you are a Jew because the people who want to murder you define you as such. Well, if someone wants to slit my throat because I am a Jew he is a raving idiot - that will not turn me into a Jew." The interview is full of such soundbites. Also:

In a way, Littell says, the starting point for the book was his asking himself how he would have behaved as a Nazi if he had been born in 1913. "So, in a way, Aue is a Nazi in the same way I would have been a Nazi - very honest, very sincere, dedicated and interested in examining the question of morality."

So the character is somehow based on you?

"Yes, okay. Fair enough."

Can you say 'Aue c'est moi'?

"You don't have to exaggerate. No, that would be reductive. Of course, in a way, I used elements of myself for the character."

One objection to the book is that it is filled with graphic descriptions of atrocities and is grossly obsessed, sometimes to the point of becoming pornographic, with sex, including incest.

"I have no clear explanation for that," Littell says, repeating his standard reply to this question. Suffice it to say that my rejection of this book and refusal to read it are re?nforced by most of the things I read about it. I'm old enough now to have developed a detector for opportunists, and it is beeping and flashing red, right now.