Holocaust Writings and their Educational Importance

N.B. This entry has been updated since it was first published. 

Last week, I finished reading Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. It was a particularly powerful novel, told from the perspective of the wearied but sardonic character of Death. In this novel, Death is the reluctant, yet careful gatherer of souls who finds particular interest in a nine-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger.

Liesel is a non-Jewish German girl who is sent, along with her brother, to live with the Hubermanns since it is no longer safe to remain with her mother. On the way to her new home, Liesel witnesses her brother’s last breaths. Given up by her mother and haunted by her brother’s ghost, Liesel must accept her new life on Himmel (ironically “Heaven”) Street.

On top of being out of place among her peers due to her lack of education, Liesel also experiences the bitter taste of hunger and poverty. Moreover, she has no contact with her mother. It is Hans Hubermann, Liesel’s adopted father, who befriends Liesel and eases her suffering. Through his amateur accordion music, he soothes her ever-present nightmares. But more importantly, despite his own limited education, he teaches her how to read.

One evening, a young Jewish man, Max Vandenburg, arrives at their home and their lives are forever changed. In the previous war, Max’s father saved Hans’ life. To repay the life-debt, Hans hides Max in the basement despite the dire consequences of being found out.

Over time, Liesel and Max become close friends. She reads to him and he writes her stories. Together, they begin to understand the power of words.

Words are an incredibly powerful tool to not only impart information, but also meaning.

On the back cover of my book, there are a number of quotations from reviewers regarding the novel.

One review struck me as not only odd, but also disconcerting.

People magazine remarked that Zusak’s novel “[d]eserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank … Poised to become a classic.”

I have an issue with this for multiple reasons.

The first is that People equates a memoir of a real person with a fictional narrative.

Moreover, Zusak’s novel is not only told from the perspective of death, but from a non-Jewish girl.

Certainly the novel, though fictional, is useful for Holocaust education. It is necessary for students to understand, as Zusak himself remarks in an interview recorded at the back of the book, that there was “another side of Nazi Germany, where certain people did hide their Jewish friends to save their lives (at the risk of their own).”

But that does not mean it should be placed on the same shelf as a Holocaust memoir. In fact, it is something to be advised against. For, in time, people may in fact believe Anne Frank’s diary to be one of fiction too.

In his book Why the Jews? , Dennis Prager discusses Lillian Hellman’s Broadway adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.

The diary was adapted almost verbatim, except for one integral passage of the diary.

In the Broadway version, Anne’s character asks: “Why are the Jews hated?” and she answers her own question by stating: “Well, one day it’s one group, and the next day another…”

But these were not the words of Anne Frank.

On April 11, 1944, Anne Frank wrote in her diary:

“Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. Who knows, it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and that reason alone do we have to suffer now. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English, or representatives of any country for that matter; we will always remain Jews, but we want to, too.”

Anne Frank knew, just like Hitler himself declared in Mein Kampf, that there was something different about the Jews. Specifically, anti-Semitism—an intense hatred of Jewishness—is clearly distinct from the history of all other bigotry and racism. As a whole, bigotry and racism is something to be deplored and actively fought against. However, my point—as many others have made—is that there is something particular about Jewishness that seems to make other people uncomfortable.

Why else would they re-write that specific part of Anne Frank’s diary for Broadway? Yes, perhaps they wanted to make the play more accessible to other people, but it was still a diary written by a Jewish girl during the Holocaust. You can’t pick and choose history to suit your own ends. These historical documents serve as not only reminders as to what happened to the Jewish people, but also—and more importantly—prove that these events did in fact occur. Moreover, we know that racism and genocide continue to occur every day. But a specific kind of racism is not a fad. It doesn’t just change from one day to the next.

But Lillian Hellman decided to take the Jewishness out of anti-Semitism by changing Anne Frank’s words.

In 2007, Ernst Zundel—a Holocaust denier—was convicted of 14 counts of incitement of racial hatred and sentenced to 5 years in prison. The maximum number of years allowed under German law for denying the Holocaust.

Before his conviction, Zundel lived in Canada for 40 years and was taken to court multiple times, arguing for the “freedom” to express his anti-Semitic views in books and on the internet.

In 2005, he was deported to Germany, the Canadian Federal Court deeming him a “threat to national security”.

In several European countries, it is a criminal offence to deny that the Holocaust happened.

It should be illegal, in any country, to deny that any genocide happened. To deny the Holocaust, or any genocide, is a hate crime in itself as it defaces and dishonours the memories of those who were ignored, abandoned, tortured, raped, and ultimately murdered for who they were as individuals and as a culture or race as a whole.

To deny that the Holocaust happened is to deny those who perished a voice.

It is certainly useful to give a voice to those who could not speak for themselves, but an author should be extremely careful when constructing a fictional Holocaust narrative.

During my graduate studies, I wrote a paper comparing a fictional Holocaust narrative—John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas—with Eli Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Night.

In the paper, I discussed the connection between trauma, adventure fiction and the child, but for this entry I want to focus on the importance of distinguishing between fictional Holocaust narratives and Holocaust memoirs.

As an ever increasing focal point in today’s media and literature, tensions surrounding the child, its body and voice, are constantly presenting a great concern.

The child survivor, prevalently, is often depicted in multiple fantasy series’ narratives.

I mention this for one particular reason:

To emphasize that the Holocaust—both as a historical event and as a narrative—is forever being perpetuated in the pages of our beloved fantasy novels.

But many people fail to see it because the narrative is glammed and glitzed up, but more problematically, glorified.

Let’s take a gander at some fantasy novels, shall we?

Let’s start with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter.

Harry Potter is the son of a wizard and a muggle-born witch. He’s a Half Blood. 

Harry is destined to vanquish You-Know-Who, also known as The Dark Lord, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Lord Voldemort, and—back in his younger years—Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Tom’s got one hell of a grudge against his muggle-born father and the world. He grows up an orphan, not fitting in, seeking ultimate power and vengeance against a world that not only didn’t seem to want him, but also one of which he felt rightfully belonged to him.

Sound familiar? Let’s break it down.

Hitler had his own beef with the world. He too had a complicated relationship with his father, one that often involved heated disagreements and misunderstandings. Orphaned at the age of 18, rejected multiple times by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and deemed unfit for military service, Hitler looked for a scapegoat to pin his less than stellar life on. Swayed by Christian prejudice and fear of eastern Jews during his stay in Vienna, and convinced that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s downfall during World War I, Hitler soon became a die-hard anti-Semite.  After becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler spent the next 12 years systematically eradicating European Jewry.

Over an even longer period of time—roughly 50 years—Riddle transforms himself into Lord Voldemort and, with the help of his posse of Death Eaters, engages in open warfare. He has two primary goals: to take over the world and annihilate all those who are not pure blood wizards.

He fails, of course, and spends the entirety of Harry’s young adult life rebuilding his power and his army. By the end of the series, Voldemort’s plan is still the same: he aims to wipe out every muggle (non-magical person), muggle-born (“mudblood”) wizard, Half Blood (even though he himself is one) wizard, as well as “muggle-lovers” who side against him.

The characters, as we know, prepare for war. But it is not war that Voldemort rages, but genocide.

Everything down to the book’s terminology—its words—is a dead ringer for a Holocaust parallel.

Terms such as “mudbloods” (i.e. “dirty” blood) and “Halfbreeds” are reminiscent of the language Joseph Goebbels—Hitler’s head of propaganda—used during the Holocaust to describe the Jews.

Just as Voldemort wished to purify the wizarding race, Hitler too wished to purify the Germans by purging not only Jews, but also any person who did not fall under Hitler’s Aryan “higher race” of beings, which included, but were not limited to: those were physically and mentally impaired; those of a different sexual orientation; and those of a different religious background or political mindset.

Both Hitler and Voldemort set out to rid the world of a particular group of people and hated these people with such an unfounded and zealous passion that they were willing to destroy their own people—Germans and magical people—in order to bring it about.

When asked if she used World War II as a model for Voldemort’s reign, J.K. Rowling responded with the following:

“It was conscious. I think that … if you were asked to name a very evil regime we would think of Nazi Germany. There were parallels in the ideology.”

Although I respect J.K. for producing something that clearly changed the world over, I’m disappointed with her half-hearted response. If she actually knew about the Holocaust, and what it entailed—which she clearly must—then it is not just a parallel, but a re-writing. In fact, it is integral to her book.

Although later on in her answer to the question, she claims that it wasn’t “exclusively that” (Nazi Germany) and then poked fun at her own government’s foolishness and hypocrisy. Granted, the British government can be quite a hoot sometimes.

However, she then concludes with this:

“The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think … that’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.”

What was the fundamental declaration after the Nuremberg Trials? Never. Again.

Essentially, an end to persecution and the creation of a check and balance system of order.

The trial’s legacy led to a number of important historical events, some of which included the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Geneva Convention (1949; 1977), and the eventual creation of the International Criminal Court.

There are certainly more “parallels” to be drawn between Harry Potter and the Holocaust, some of which are mentioned here: http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/features/essays/issue27/nazi-germany; http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/features/essays/issue1/ThirdReich). The latter article provides a number of interesting and useful sources on both subjects.

Before I move on, I’d like to make one thing very clear: although the parallels between the Holocaust and the Harry Potter series are undeniable, I argue that the books are a commentary on genocide as a whole, not just the Holocaust. This, of course, makes them extremely useful and valuable—not only for young children, but also for people of all ages. However, I still feel that it is necessary to stress that J.K. had Hitler and the Holocaust in mind when she created her story.

Sometimes, it is necessary to use fiction to perpetuate the morals and lessons of history, especially when history alone is not always enough.

Recently, I watched the second installment of the Hunger Games series, Catching Fire, and found similar parallels.

There are multiple places on the internet which have, for years, drawn parallels between these two things.

As many have already said, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games is a combination of a number of things: the life of Spartacus, the myth of Theseus saving children from the Minotaur, as well as Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo in terms of depictions of starvation.

More strikingly, however, is the genocidal undertones of the Capitol’s agenda.

President Snow, in the first Hunger Games installment, asks the Gamemaker why they don’t just round up 24 people every year and kill them off. Obviously Hitler had no interest in keeping any non-Aryans alive, but the absolute cruelty of having children wipe each other out bred bad blood between Districts and ensured their separation from each other, not only via the barriers, but also through the psychological and emotional distance in having to one day face them in the arena.

Sound familiar?

During World War II, the Jews were rounded up and ghettoized. Forced into abject poverty and desperation, they were left to fend for themselves and often turned against each other in order to survive.

It wasn’t until I saw Catching Fire that I noticed the extent of the parallel.

When President Snow discusses the upcoming games with the new Gamemaker, he remarks:

“[Katniss Everdeen’s] species must be eradicated.”

Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Gamemaker, asks: “Her species, sir?”

President Snow then replies, “The other victors. Because of her, they all pose a threat. Because of her, they all think they’re invincible.”

This returns to my point about the importance of words. I don’t know for certain that these exact words were used in the books, but even if they weren’t, it still provides particular insight into how we market our literature to the world.

Why the word “species”? Why not simply say, “We must eradicate all the victors.”

This would clarify things, because the emphasis would be on the fact that President Snow wished to extinguish their hope. By killing all the victors, hope would be lost, and the Districts would finally stop fighting back and resign themselves to despair.

However, the word species is used and then clarified. But not before it draws attention to itself. Not before President Snow slips up. His true, and more malevolent intention, is that he desires to eradicate the outer Districts because he ultimately feels that they are a disease and will destroy the Capitol’s perfection.

Katniss’s symbol is the mockingjay—a symbol of the resistance. When the people of the districts discovered that the Jabber Jays—bred solely for the purpose of spying—were reporting back to the Capitol, they began feeding lies to them. Soon, the Jabber Jays were abandoned and left to fend for themselves in the wild. Instead of becoming distinct, they mated with mockingbirds. A new species was born—one created without the ‘permission’ of the Capitol.

Many people might not see the parallel between the Hunger Games and the Holocaust since Hitler almost successfully annihilated the Jews. Instead of starting a glorified rebellion against Nazi Germany, the Jews were sent to the gas chambers. The possibility of any large-scale rebellion was futile.

However, there were those who banded together to rise up against their oppressors.

In 1943, in the Warsaw ghetto, Jewish residents rebelled. In response, the Germans, commanded by General Jurgen Stroop, systematically burned the district's buildings, killed roughly 7000 rebels and sent survivors to concentration camps. SS leader Heinrich Himmler documented the event. Time magazine published the photo. After the war, the Allied leaders used this photo as evidence against. Stroop. He was tried and convicted of war crimes. He was then executed by hanging on March 6, 1952.

In other ways, people fought back during the Holocaust.

Jews were often hid from Nazi soldiers by other German families, anti-Nazi literature was transmitted to de-brainwash German citizens, and Jews were also transported to safer locations outside Germany.

Moreover, the imagery within Hunger Games—particularly the fire imagery—echoes that of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

In The Book Thief, Zusak makes an interesting observation about Nazi Germany:

“You see, people may tell you that Nazi Germany was built on anti-Semitism, a somewhat overzealous leader, and a nation of hatefed bigots, but it would all have come to nothing had the Germans not loved one particular activity: To burn” (24).

The word Holocaust refers to a great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.

In Middle English, the word means burnt offering, referencing biblical sacrifice in which an animal was wholly burnt on the alter in worship of God.

The word comes from the Greek word holokauston—“that which is completely burnt”—which was a translation of Hebrew—“that which goes up” in smoke.

In the 17th century, the meaning of the word broadened to “something totally consumed by fire”.

As the “girl on fire”, Katniss Everdeen represents those districts which are being persecuted by the Capitol. Moreover, District 13—the ghost district that no longer exists at the start of the series— was destroyed by fire.

District 12, Katniss’ district, meets the same fate.

The firebombing of District 12, its mass grave at the end of Mockingjay, and Katniss’ memory book to honour the dead all echo the Holocaust and other examples of starvation and genocide under totalitarian regimes.

With all of this in mind, popular children’s and young adult’s fiction are effective educational tools since students can better empathize with the children/young adults depicted in its pages. Even if students do not learn the magnitude of the horror of the Holocaust specifically, they can still internalize the universal message of the Holocaust’s aftermath and carry that message forward into the future.

Moreover, there is something unique about the child survivor’s trauma and testimony. These narratives are useful in better understanding other victims’ early childhood traumas.

Of the six million Jewish people killed during the Holocaust (1933-1945), one and a half million were children (“child” being defined as 16 and younger).

Only 1% of the prewar children survived World War II. These children are now the only remaining witnesses to the Holocaust.

That is why it is integral to present as close to the truth as possible—not merely just the facts, but the emotional reality behind an event of such magnitude.

John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas attempts to convey such an emotional reality. Similar to The Book Thief, it is told from the other side of the camp.

Told by an unnamed narrator from the perspective of a nine-year-old boy named Bruno, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas describes the obligatory relocation of a German family to “Out-With” (Bruno’s pronunciation of Auschwitz). To combat his boredom, Bruno often gazes out his bedroom window and discovers the strange people garbed in striped pajamas. As Bruno’s story unfolds, the informed reader learns of his father’s role under Hitler’s command as well as the family’s close proximity to a Jewish concentration camp.

I could discuss the book in great detail, but I wish to focus solely on its ending—the book’s and Hollywood’s interpretation of it.

Although critics dismiss Boyne’s text as inciting empathy for the perpetrators, his careful depiction of Bruno’s family offers further interpretations behind the Holocaust and insight into the minds of those on the other side of the fence.

Essentially, it is not that the wrong boy died, it is that Bruno, like Shmuel (the Jewish boy Bruno befriends in the concentration camp), died without grasping the meaning of their deaths.

The entire premise of the book is centred on Bruno’s misunderstanding of his entire situation which represents, in various ways, that there is the very real possibility that there were those who remained ignorant to what was happening.

I myself have struggled with this idea for years. How could there be people unaware of what was happening during the Holocaust?

During my MA degree, a fellow colleague, from South Africa, informed our class that she was in school during Apartheid and wasn’t aware of what was happening. From our perspective, especially receiving all the media coverage, we are at a loss as to how this could be possible.

But it certainly is possible and was during the Holocaust.

This theme of incomprehensibility culminates in the text’s conclusion: Bruno’s father sits in the same spot outside the fence where Bruno shed his clothes and crawled under the fence.

The only evidence Boyne provides as to whether Bruno’s father realized what happened to his son is the description of him looking “into the distance … and followed it through logically, step by step, and when he did he found that his legs seemed to stop working right – as if they couldn’t hold his body up any longer – and he ended up sitting on the ground in almost exactly the same position as Bruno had every afternoon for a year, although he didn’t cross his legs beneath him” (216).

In this moment, Bruno’s father appears to make the strongest effort to empathize with his son, to understand what happened to him. His legs giving out, as in the physical shock of sudden comprehension, suggest that he does uncover the truth of Bruno’s disappearance.

In allowing the soldiers to remove him from “Out-With,” Bruno’s father demonstrates his disinterest in life, no longer caring “what they did to him any more” (216). In shutting down, Bruno’s father reveals that he, at long last, gains a glimmer of understanding: in failing as a father to Bruno, he loses far more than just the war—he loses his desire to live, and importantly, his right to life.

Ending his text on an ironic note, Boyne writes “Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age” in order to emphasize that genocide does continue to occur and will continue to do so unless humans learn the true meaning of empathy.

This insight—the ability to emotionally access the Holocaust, or any other genocide—allows for a unique and useful empathy to be evoked.

What is not useful, however, is the re-writing of Boyne’s novel in visual form. Hollywood’s version, instead of leaving audiences with an unsettled feeling, garner an intense emotional reaction to Bruno’s death. Bruno’s father, mother, and sister, all realize what happens to Bruno. Their agonizing faces and sobs echo in viewer’s minds and ears.

Although gassed with a number of other people, including a young boy his own age, Bruno’s death is what Hollywood encourages audiences to be affected and affronted by. Nevermind that Bruno’s father had already successfully gassed hundreds of people in that camp by the time Bruno lost his life.

Words are particularly powerful—we must always be careful how we visually represent them to the uneducated masses.

Unlike the adaptation of Boyne’s novel, the ending of Zusak’s novel is particularly effective.

At the novel’s conclusion, Death converses with the girl Liesel—now an old woman—about Liesel’s novel, The Book Theif, that she wrote about her life.

Liesel asks Death if he could make any sense of it. Wanting to explain many things to Liesel, Death thinks about how the “same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant” (550).

He finally says to her, “I am haunted by humans.”

Human beings are capable of so much good and yet so much destruction. That is why these narratives, be it in fiction or memoir form, are necessary in perpetuating the lessons of the Holocaust in order to not only educate future generations, but also lesson the likelihood of other Hitlers, and those like him, from rising up and annihilating all that is good and right in the world.