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Introduction

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Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives

Abstract

In the introduction, the author examines the human dimension of Holocaust perpetration. Focusing on discourses of determinism and the impact of social norms on individual patterns of behaviour, she takes to task the very concept of evil, showing it to be unhelpful in understanding the motivations that led to the genocide. By figuring Holocaust perpetrators as fundamentally human, the author is successful in showing that they are subject to the same range of social, political and psychological forces as those of the reader. The destabilising effect of this potential commonality, as the author shows, has significant repercussions in terms of the production of empathy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is not the case in texts that depict Adolf Hitler; here, an external narrative perspective is usually adopted, underlining a general sense of inexplicability and contributing to the mythologisation of his character, as discussed in Chapter 6.

  2. 2.

    Picoult does, in fact, make use of a first-person narrative mode, but since the person telling the story turns out to be telling the story of his brother, the text does present a barrier between the narrator and the events that he is narrating.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom

    Joanne Pettitt

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  1. Joanne Pettitt
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Pettitt, J. (2017). Introduction. In: Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52575-4_1

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