The Holocaust across Borders

In this book, scholars with expertise in various national literatures and cultures explore how the Holocaust has been represented in novels, memoirs, film, television, and architecture. This book provides a unique vantage point for the scholar and student to compare how national context impacts representations of the Holocaust.

“Literature of the Holocaust” courses, whether taught in high schools or at universities, necessarily cover texts from a broad range of international contexts. Instructors are required, regardless of their own disciplinary training, to become comparatists and discuss all works with equal expertise. This books offers analyses of the ways in which representations of the Holocaust—whether in text, film, or material culture—are shaped by national context, providing a valuable pedagogical source in terms of both content and methodology. As memory yields to post-memory, nation of origin plays a larger role in each re-telling, and the chapters in this book explore this notion covering well-known texts like Night (Hungary), Survival in Auschwitz (Italy), MAUS (United States), This Way to the Gas (Poland), and The Reader (Germany), while also introducing lesser-known representations from countries like Argentina or Australia.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Selling the Holocaust in 21^st Century France

Hilene Flanzbaum, Butler University

Chapter 2: Life is Beautiful, or Not: The Myth of the Good Italian

Shira Klein, Chapman University

Chapter 3: Not my Holocaust: MAUS and Memory in the Polish Classroom

Holli Levitsky, Loyola Marymount University

Chapter 4: Germans, Migration and Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Literature

Agnes Mueller, University of South Carolina

Chapter 5: The Burden of the Third Generation in Germany: Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

Victoria Aarons, Trinity University

Chapter 6: An Impossible Homecoming: Ruth Kluger’s Austria

Sarah Painitz, Butler University

Chapter 7: Fractures and Refraction in Argentina: Prosthetic Memory and Edgardo Cozarinsky’s Lejos de donde

Amy Kaminsky, University of Minnesota

Chapter 8: Anglicization and the Holocaust in Judith Kerr and Eva Tucker’s Fiction

Joshua Lander, University of Glasgow

Chapter 9: Collective Disengagement: Canada’s National Holocaust Memorial

Lizy Mostowski, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Chapter 10: Forgetting and Remembering: The Holocaust in Australian Fiction

Ira Nadel, University of British Columbia

Chapter 11: We Are the New Children: Shoah and Israeli Childhood in Nava Semel’s And the RatLaughed

Ranen Omer-Sherman, University of Louisville

Chapter 12: Representing the Holocaust and Jewishness in Contemporary Television: The Man inthe High Castle,Hunters and Juda

Marat Grinberg, Reed College

Index

About the Contributors