Abstract
In this article, I argue that fiction that centralizes the perpetrator perspective should be understood as a central part of the canon of Holocaust fiction. However, as I aim to show, greater distinction needs to be made between different kinds of perpetrator writing. Comparing fiction about generic Nazis with stories that centralize the figure of Adolf Hitler, I attempt to outline some of the key similarities and differences. Ultimately, perpetrator fiction works by drawing connections with the reader: the implication is that readers also have the capacity for wrongdoing and could, under the necessary conditions, act in atrocious ways. This has implications for reader responses, especially those concerning empathy and judgement. On the other hand, Hitler fiction relies on the ‘otherness’ of the Nazi leader, whose character resists easy normalization. This raises important questions about Hitler’s place in the Western cultural imagination.
Highlights
In his introduction to Literature of the Holocaust, Harold Bloom confesses that he ‘does not know exactly what Holocaust literature is’ (2004: 1)
Rosenfeld is even more explicit in his dismissal of the perpetrator perspective; he comments: the point should be clear: we lack a phenomenology of reading Holocaust literature, a series of maps that would guide us on our way as we picked up and variously tried to comprehend the writings of the victims, the survivors, the survivors-who-become-victims, and the kinds-ofsurvivors, those who were never there but know more than the outlines of the place
If the main point of Holocaust literature is to grapple with the chasm left in the wake of genocide, it must surely both engage with the immense suffering of the victims and reflect on the human capacity for cruelty that enabled such extreme acts of perpetration to occur in the first place
Summary
Adolf Hitler has come to characterize ‘evil’ in the cultural psyche. perhaps as a consequence of this designation, fiction that focuses on depictions of the Nazi leader – what I call Hitler fiction – does not work in the same way as perpetrator fiction more generally. The second half of the story functions as a kind of wish-fulfilment: written as a piece of fiction by the family patriarch, Jakob, the story provides a means of catharsis as Hitler is forced to face justice for his crimes This attempt to live out the fantasy of Hitler’s death is especially poignant given that the persecution of the Jews in Europe was ongoing at the time of publication. This process of othering renders Hitler fiction different from perpetrator fiction, which works in the opposite way by showing Nazi perpetrators to be fundamentally human: subject to the same range of social, psychological and cultural forces as the reader Both the assumption of Hitler’s guilt and the rejection of his normality attest to the specificities of Hitler’s place within the cultural psyche
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