Abstract
The literature of the holocaust is a retrospective form of protest. The crime has already been committed; the millions of the dead, victims of the Nazi genocidal plan, cannot be brought back to life. No amount of reparations can hope to atone for this monstrous letting of blood. The guilt of those directly or indirectly associated with the crime of genocide remains, and they, like the survivors among the intended victims, must make the effort to understand what aboriginal taint in humankind was responsible for this gratuitous outbreak of homicidal passion. Why did the conscience of the world remain silent while these atrocities were taking place in the abattoirs of Europe? Why did this relapse into barbarism occur in the twentieth century and in, theoretically, the most enlightened nation on earth? To a number of presentday German writers it seemed as if the race had gone mad and they use the metaphor of madness to account for this saturnalia of blood and death. But then the metaphysical question obtrudes itself: were the Germans alone to blame or was the rest of the world implicated in this crime of genocide? The postwar writers voice their protest against the inhumanity of man to man by bearing witness to the agonizing truth of the horror.
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References
Alex Comfort, Art and Social Responsibility. London: Falcon Press, 1948, p. 22.
Max Frisch, Three Plays. Translated by Michael Bullock. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1961, p. 3.
Quoted in Alex Natan (ed.), German Men of Letters. Volume III. London: Oswald Wolff, Limited, 1964, p. 319.
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See Marie Syrkin, “The Literature of the Holocaust,” Midstream, May 1966, XII, pp. 3–20.
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See Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1960.
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In The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany Gunter Lewy declares that there is no way of proving or disproving Hochhuth’s arguments that if Pope Pius XII had protested the massacre of the Jews he might have saved many lives. “Whether a Papal decree of excommunication against Hitler would have dissuaded the Führer from carrying out his plan to destroy the Jews is very doubtful. A revocation of the Concordat by the Holy See would have bothered Hitler still less. However, a flaming protest against the massacre of the Jews, coupled with the imposition of the interdict upon all of Germany or the excommunication of all Catholics in any way involved with the apparatus of the Final Solution would have been a far more formidable and effective weapon.” Gunter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964, p. 303.
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Glicksberg, C.I. (1972). The Kingdom of Nightmare and Death. In: Literature and Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_15
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