De opgang

"In the summer of 1979, a house in Patershol in Ghent caught the attention of Stefan Hertmans. The wisteria hung dusty, but the scent hit him deeply and took him back to childhood. He bought the property on a whim. It was only after he had sold it twenty years later that he was confronted with what had happened during the war. Astonishing was the discovery that the former occupant was an SS. "It is incomprehensible," writes Hertmans, "that everything I could have known at the time, or at least suspected, could have passed me so thoughtlessly." Slowly the man he wants to learn to understand…