Vyvolení

One of the centres of the Nazi euthanasia programme, in which the sick, the physically or mentally handicapped and the otherwise "inferior" were liquidated, was the Spiegelgrund clinic on the grounds of the Steinhof Hospital in Vienna between 1940 and 1945. Here, Nazi doctors carried out horrific experiments on orphaned, 'socially maladjusted' or 'racially degenerate' children. In this microcosm, the story of two different characters unfolds: the prisoner and patient Adrian Ziegler and the nurse Anna Katschenko. Both are irrevocably scarred by the horrific conditions, and each copes in his own way. After The Poor in Lodz, which became an international bestseller, The Chosen is Sem-Sandberg's next literary and highly artistic probe into the otherwise hard-to-grasp everyday reality of World War II. While death was the rule for the poor in Lodz, for the children rescued in Spiegelgrund, survival became a lifelong state of exception.

Czech edition