Abstract
The opening chapter illustrates the ways in which the identities and behaviours of individual perpetrators are intricately tied to society and its norms. Using a series of examples including Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber, Littell’s The Kindly Ones, Amis’s Time’s Arrow and Schlink’s The Reader, the author shows that the desire to belong to the homogeneous mass is an essential part of perpetrator characterisation. The author then details the numerous ways in which subplots or leitmotifs are employed to undermine ideas of commonality and sameness. The chapter closes by questioning why guilt associated with the Nazi genocide does not appear to be ‘guilty enough’.
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Notes
- 1.
Because of its perpetrator perspective, as well as its use of grotesque and pornographic imagery, Hilsenrath initially struggled to find a publisher for the novel in Germany. It was first published by Doubleday – an American publishing house – in 1971. The German edition was not released until several years later (1977).
- 2.
Mitläufer was the term used in the de-Nazification trials to denote someone who acquiesced to the Nazi regime without actively or knowingly participating in the atrocities that the regime induced. It is usually translated as ‘fellow-traveller’ or ‘hanger-on’.
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Pettitt, J. (2017). Nazis in Society. In: Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52575-4_2
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