The Significance of Fiction in Understanding the Holocaust's Impact

This essay delves into the crucial role of fiction in representing the Holocaust, arguing that literature serves as a vital tool for understanding and remembering this historical tragedy. It examines various literary works, including short stories by Ida Fink, Bernard Gotfyrd, and others, to illustrate how fiction captures the complexities of the Holocaust experience. The analysis highlights the use of realism, symbolism, and metaphors in depicting the horrors of the camps, the psychological impact on survivors, and the ethical dilemmas faced by victims. The essay underscores the importance of fiction in preserving memory, challenging historical narratives, and fostering a deeper comprehension of the Holocaust's enduring significance. It explores themes of survival, loss, and the struggle to maintain humanity in the face of unimaginable suffering, emphasizing the qualitative value of life even in the face of death.

Running Head: ROLE OF FICTION IN THE HOLOCAUST
Role of fiction in the Holocaust
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Introduction
“Today, I am not sure that what I wrote is true. I am certain it is truthful (Delbo and
John).”- wrote Charlotte Delbo in None of Us Will Return where she meditates upon the
occurrence of life and death that has marked the time during the Holocaust and the time after
it. Many people question the importance of the Holocaust and its significance for future
generations. One the most important thing to keep in mind in this cases is the fact that
holocaust is a contemporary issue and it cannot be termed as an event that remains consigned
to history, neither should it receive such a treatment. The reason for this particular
understanding is that the reasons for the occurrence of holocaust lie in ancient times. It is not
bound by a few years, it goes back to the set parameters of the modern era, and even before
the concept of anti-Semitism was conceived. The holocaust would not have been a reality
unless it had the protocols of the elders of Zion, and Dreyfus, and also the Spanish
Inquisition. The various forms of discrimination that was followed against the Jews in the
name of Anti-Semitism were not something that the Nazi regime had invented. Instead, it was
the manipulation and amplification of the pre-existing notions of prejudices in the minds of
the society that led to the Holocaust. Hence, the Holocaust is a contemporary issue that
contains a clear demonstration of the atmosphere in which genocide can take place. Hence,
one of the best ways to remind the generation of the present and that of the future is to teach
them the truth behind the Holocaust and to recognize the signs of it in order to understand the
course of events that lead to the final stage of systematic mass extermination.
Discussion
It is important to learn from history, imperative to tackle it, challenge it, debate upon
it, hold discussions, and expose the truth so that the contemporary nature of Holocaust does
not get erased from the minds and memory of the people. One of the best ways to this is to

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take the help of fiction, as it has been done by many survivors of the holocaust (Berger).
However, fiction is not the only form of literature that exists which recount the harrowing
accounts of truth. Along with fiction, documentations have been found in the form of diaries,
memoirs, poetry, short stories, etc. However, the focus of this paper is on the fiction that
represents holocaust and these works have been recognized as canonical since they are
extremely important texts and define the significance and meaning of the genre. Nevertheless,
the beauty that holocaust art and literature has been capable of achieving has been damped by
the misery that is eternally tied to its theme. The selection of texts in the book, Art from the
Ashes is compelling in revealing the nature of things that had unrevealed and are capable of
highlighting the truth about the reality of holocaust with great intensity (Berger).
Ida Fink, in her short stories The Key Game and A Spring Morning, shows how acute
effort has been out in order to reconstruct the past occurrence of events that are highly rooted
in realism. The dimension of time is not measured in terms of months and years, but time is
more of an eternal concept. It transforms into an experience that does not suffice to be a scrap
of time. Rather it measures more than a simple remembrance of events and actions that took
place in a year. It is important to point out that Fink’s writing is marked by the existence of
realism that is extremely cruel, but there also lies a sense of hope, along with spiritual
persistence (Langer). She uses symbols, images, and metaphors for highlighting the facts. Her
protagonists are known to have or experience to forms of recollection that are the horizontal
one that is known to talk about the conventionality of the events that occurred every day and
the vertical recollection that has its reach into the depth of the subconscious mind and the
layers of psyche that are extremely obscure. The vertical recollection takes place mostly as a
result of some triggering event or sign that pushes the protagonists into the dark abyss of the
past. Time is also always ticking away in Fink’s stories. The significance of it lies in the fact
that the characters have the will to live and exist fully in these given scraps of time that is set

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against the anticipation of death. People in Fink’s stories are always rushing in attempts to
love and live quickly, suddenly, and tenderly (Langer). The identification of the Jewish
characters in stories of Fink primarily consists of their dreams, hopes, aspirations, as well as
possibilities instead of the body in its physical state. Their enough sense of self-esteem in
situations that generally lead to despair. Fink's heroes contain in themselves the power of
perseverance in the moments before death. Just like the instance of Tsaritsa, death often
comes without a prelude or warning of any sorts. But the visualization takes place in the form
of footprints that remain on snow, the footprints of the deceased. There is a close intimacy
between life and death in most of Fink’s stories, which she enlists -all are human, and
specifically of Jewish origin whose tragedies are used to prove her point. Hence, it can be
said that the crux of Fink’s stories lies in the fact that the meaning of life is not and should
not be compromised (just like her characters), even in the face of death and the constant
threat of annihilation. Fink strongly believed that life’s value lied in the qualitative and not its
quantitative aspects (Langer).
In The Last Morning from Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust,
Bernard Gotfyrd writes the story that retells an episode of the execution of his mother in one
of the concentration camps. He says that it was the most traumatic event for him to write on
paper as he had extremely vivid memories, which included every nuance, every smell, and
sound. On finishing it, he was covered with sweat and tears (Langer).
Lustig in Diamonds of the Night tell the tale of ordinary people whose lives turned
upside down because of the Holocaust with the help of depiction of dreams and series of
misfortunes. There is a certain sense of prophetic vision in his description, a sharpness that
describes the situation of a devastated mother who was unable to find her son after the war
and lived with a hope of discovering him someday- “It seemed . . . that her heartbeat like that
of a caged bird, trembling with fear even in sleep''. Whereas his narrative also consisted of a

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story of a commander who was a Nazi and was split between the love he had for his feeble-
minded child and had considered of deporting the boy that is termed as “the merciful act.”
Lustig’s narration of his period of internship in concentration camps is an account that can
only be heard from one of the survivor- “The dental technicians had a hell of a job prying the
gold teeth out of those old women''. Nevertheless, his stories also account for brief moments
of surreal and transcendental beauties that occur in the Nazi created hell. “Infinity,'' contains
records of a Jew who was cynical but listened to the women prisoners who used to sing; it
was not meant to be a lament for the ones who are dead; instead the music invoked “…the
night with a forgotten strength, forgotten tenderness, forgotten defiance, and forgotten
understanding (Langer).''
Attendance List for a Funeral, by Alexander Kluge, at begins with the list containing
the details of members of the family and friends who are about to attend a funeral service
with the help of a few adjectives that help describe the mental state of the protagonist.
Soul of Wood made Jakov Lind’s reputation as one of the most boldly imaginative
postwar German writers, and it remains his most celebrated achievement. In the title novella
and six subsequent stories, Lind distorts and refashions reality to make the deepest horrors of
the twentieth century his own (Langer).
The story of Soul of Wood, by Wohlbrecht, is set during the World War II that
recounts the tale of how a veteran, being peg-legged, had rescued a young Jewish paralyzed
boy named Anton Barth, and hid him in the mountains after the death of his parents in the
war. However, he abandons the forlorn child to help himself while Wohlbrecht comes back to
Vienna and is bound to an asylum for mentally ill people. There he, along with the help of the
chief psychiatrist, compels many patients to be injected with lethal drugs (Langer). However,
the collapse of Germany and the fate of the war become more evident with every passing day.

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Hence, Wohlbrecht plans for a way of retribution by deciding to return to the boy who was
his token of redemption. However, the readers come to know that he was not the only one
with such an idea.
Sara Nomberg-Przytyk wrote both The Verdict and Friendly Meeting after surviving
the Shoah. She lived in Poland until the Nazis invaded in 1939 when she fled east, in 1943
she ended up being sent to Stutthof concentration camp and eventually to Auschwitz. The
stories capture the reader and show examples of what Langer means by "choiceless choices"
that victims of the Shoah were forced to make (Langer).
The Verdict tells the readers of an experience that was told to Sara while working as a
clerk in a group of five at "Camp C". The story begins by describing how Mrs Helena was
quiet and never took part in the gossiping of the group. We are told that she "...eavesdropped
on [the group's] gossiping and seemed to be saying, 'I would like to see how you would
behave in a similar situation'" (Langer 264). But one day, Mrs Helena tells the group the story
of how she knew that over a hundred girls that lined up outside the infirmary, a long time
ago, were going to die and she did not tell them. She worked as a clerk with a few other
inmates, and they all agreed it would be best to not tell the girls of their fate. The girls find
out eventually, and chaos erupts outside, and girls start being dragged in by guards instead of
happily marching in, expecting to leave Auschwitz (Langer).
Mrs Helena recalls having questioned whether they should tell the happy girls that
they were not going to be released, but instead, they were going to be killed. The group of
clerks rationalized to themselves that if they told the girls, "...a struggle for life would ensue"
(Langer), which actually happens when the girls discover that they are being killed, showing
that the clerks were right to think that the girls would struggle. This change is even noted by

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Mrs Helena when she says "Their deaths were completely different from the deaths of the
first batch of women who went to their deaths unknowing. Who knows which death was
more difficult, but the first group seemed to die more peacefully" (Langer).
The idea of making a choice that has no good outcome has been a hard thing for me to
grasp throughout the semester so far. It is hard to imagine needing to make a choice that these
survivors had to make, but the story that Mrs Helena tells to Sara puts it in a more personal
and individual account that helped me understand the idea. Of course, we have read and
discussed other accounts of these types of choices, but this one really solidified the idea more
so than the others. Perhaps one reason why this account helps me understand this idea of
having to make seemingly impossible choices with no actual positive outcome is because
Sara Nomberg-Przytyk was telling us of when this idea began to make sense for her.
Before Mrs Helena's story, the group would gossip about the choices that other
prisoners had to make, but after the story, they could not identify what they would have done
in Mrs Helena's situation. It seems almost as if the group didn't understand that there was no
"easy choice" until after Mrs Helena's story and I think Mrs Helena's sentence at the end of
the story, asking what the right choice was really made this clear to me, that there was no
clear right choice (Langer).
Conclusion
However, most of the survivors of war have a different approach to the world outside,
and this is where the difference lies between those who carried out the atrocities and those
who were killed and survived. It is thus important and essential to keep the discussions,
debates, and questions alive in the minds of the population so that the knowledge can help
humanity to avoid the repetition of such an incident in any particular time period of human
existence.

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Work Cited
Berger, Alan L. Crisis and Covenant: The Holocaust in American Jewish Fiction. SUNY
Press, 2012.
Delbo, Charlotte, and John Githens. None of us will return. New York: Grove Press, 1968.
Langer, Lawrence L. "Art from the ashes: A Holocaust Anthology." (1995).
Patterson, David, Sarita Cargas, and Alan L. Berger. Encyclopedia of Holocaust literature.
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
Roskies, David G., and Naomi Diamant. Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide. UPNE,
2012.
Vice, Sue. Holocaust Fiction. Psychology Press, 2000.