Over the last 70 years, Holocaust representations increased significantly as cultural objects distributed on a large scale: fictional books, museum sites, artworks, documentaries, and films are only a few samples of those echoes the Holocaust produced in contemporary Western culture. There are some specific patterns in the way the Holocaust has been represented that, however, contrast with the survivors’ account of the same event: for example, the dichotomy between bad and good characters so essential within Holocaust-based media – especially on television and film - does not really match with the testimony’s experience. While storytelling strategies may help to involve the public by emotionally engaging with the story, the risks of altering the real meaning of the Holocaust are quite high: what we often label as a “story” is actually been an outrageous, documented mass-genocide. Furthermore, as the age gap between the present and the past generation progresses, also the collective awareness of Nazi crimes as a real fact gets compromised.
This volume explores selected Holocaust narrations by contextualizing the historical, literary, and social influences those texts had in their unique points of view. Starting with some recent examples of Holocaust exploitation through social media, the first chapter explores the paradigm shift when the Holocaust became a cultural, fictional trend rather than a historical massacre. In the second chapter, the analysis examines postmodern representations of Holocaust and Nazi semantics through relevant examples taken from both American and European literature. The third chapter analyses Europe Central by William T. Vollman, as all the narratological and cultural issues considered in the previous two chapters are well outlined in this articulated novel, where the relationship between reality and its representation after the postmodernist period is largely investigated.
In chapter four, an account is given of the connections and differences between the narratological category romance, as understood by Northrop Frye, and Holocaust narration features. In chapter five, those elements are used to consider the work of Italian Holocaust survivor and Jewish writer Primo Levi, as his narration around Auschwitz adopts some fictional tools and still refuses undemanding storytelling mechanisms. The sixth and final chapter examines the relevant novel Les Benviellants by Jonathan Littell, considering its Nazi genocide account through the antagonist’s perspective.
“The zone of interest”: honouring the Holocaust victims
