(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Already on the cover of The Torturer from Bergen, we are visually warned, or guided, to something central to the book with its horrifying theme. Here we are met by cold, machine-like typefaces, social gothic stencils, which describe a reliable, warmer family scene, a picture with four children and two parents. The father holds the youngest child. In the book we hear about silver wedding celebrations and penny buns. And it is in contrast to a seemingly ordinary family situation that we are to be led into the story of the family man, businessman and craftsman who became a Gestapo torturer, but showed no remorse before the death sentence was carried out in 1946.
Kristin Aalen approaches this topic from her close family, or rather, her husband's. A cruel reality of a story that has been repressed over the years and has become a trauma among Max Rook#'s descendants. That grandfather was a torturer and one of the few Norwegians executed for the crimes he committed during the war was not something that could be easily discussed. His wife changed her name.
Aalen gets permission from the family to delve into Rook's story. At first, just as a personal attempt to untangle the knots in this trauma, find out what happened, draw pictures and perhaps have a redeeming conversation within the family?
Is there a torturer germ in us?
But during Aalen's writing process, other journalists also began to publish material about Rook based on the newly opened files in the war archives in Bergen. There were horrifying depictions of "the hotplate torturer Rook". A monster, a monstrosity. Someone who enjoyed seeing others suffer. The opportunity to go a little deeper, to come up with nuances and analytical assessments of the traitor's role seemed to have to give way to sensationalist journalism, Aalen believed. Rook's descendants agreed that she would develop the simple first booklet, which had been written for use in the family's internal conversations, into a book that would then be published. She entered into an agreement with Gyldendal. She wanted to get under the skin of the "torturer", to find the reasons he must have had for siding with the occupying forces in this particular way. The book is about Rook's path from being an immigrant and wealthy bricklayer to going bankrupt, living in isolation and becoming a feared and hated torturer in Gestapo-house in the center of Bergen.
To be able to become like "him"?
Gradually, the author's intentions develop further. The ambitious radio and newspaper journalist wants to know more about the prerequisites we all have to be able to become like "him" if the opportunity arose. Is there a germ of torture in us?
So Aalen has to apply in this field as well. She finds Philip Zimbardos experimentation with students who torture their fellow students in a few hours; Eichmann, who had the task of streamlining transport to the concentration camps and otherwise participated in the Wannsee Conference's planning of the extermination camps during the war; and the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt and her "banality of evil" – all provide prisms with different contributions that are refracted during the uncovering in Aalen's Rook analysis. And not least Norwegian contributions, such as from the theologian and professor Paul Leer-Salvesen and others.
This is the book's strong point. Aalen attempts to elevate the frightening, but close and detailed, of a single person's life, albeit 80 years ago, to a tool for understanding people in our own time. Understand ourselves. Through the description of a rough-skinned bricklayer with a child in his arms, who could have been on paternity leave in 2025, Aalen takes us into an incomprehensible and difficult psychological and traumatic world and says: Yes, maybe we could have become a Rook? She does not defend, does not draw warmth where monstrous features protrude. Does not try to sugarcoat the pill.
Choosing the good
Rook's farewell letter shows not only a man who was concerned with his family, but also a combative and unrepentant side that his descendants will always have to struggle with. But in conclusion, there is a message in the book that cuts through defiantly: If we cannot all be saved from the possibility of becoming servants of evil, of becoming "torturers", then we can all, as living people, choose good. Despite threats of punishment and exclusion, Aalen shows us through examples in the form of Rook's acquaintances in Bergen that there was room for ethical action. Many resisted and said no. It is possible to choose good, Aalen concludes.
In Gaza and the West Bank
Aalen raises rare questions, such as whether American President Harry Truman is a "monster" after his bombing raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yet it is Primo Levi's words that stick with me after the last page of this book: "Monsters exist... more dangerous are the ordinary people, the functionaries who are ready to believe in something and to act without asking questions."
A tool for understanding people in our own time.
Levi said this with his background as a survivor of the prison camps in Auschwitz. And in the spring of 2025, the elephant in the room, at least the one that haunts this reader, is the question of how those who say they carry the legacy of Primo Levi – in a state that bears the Star of David and Yad Vashem’s Holocaust memorial – can commit genocide in a continuously live-streamed war of extermination in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine? And yet, perhaps more seriously: How can we “ordinary people, functionaries” not act, can accept that this is happening, without standing up? Aalen’s tale of the “monster” Rook says that we can choose good. In Gaza, neither we nor our leaders have done so.
