Panorama — H.G. Adler

A brilliant epic, Panorama is a portrait of a place and people soon to be destroyed, as seen through the eyes of young Josef Kramer. Told in ten distinct scenes, it begins in pastoral Word War I -- era Bohemia, where the boy passively witnesses the "wonders of the world" in a thrilling panorama display; follows him to a German boarding school full of creeping xenophobia and prejudice; and finds him in young adulthood sent to a labor camp and then to one of the infamous extermination camps, before he chooses exile abroad after the war. Josef's philosophical journey mirrors the author's own: from a stoic acceptance of events to a realization that "the viewer is also the participant" and that action must be taken in life, if only to make sure the dead are not forgotten.