What to read? Literature based on the history of the camp

Transcript of the podcast

Recently, several publications with Auschwitz in the title have appeared on the publishing market. Recently, several publications with Auschwitz in their title have appeared on the publishing market. Can we say that we are dealing with a second wave of camp literature, no longer written by direct witnesses, but by people who exploit the subject of Auschwitz, setting it somewhere in reality, but it is nonetheless fiction? To what extent are these stories, to some degree, based on facts the author's imagination expressed in the reality of that period?

I'd wonder if we are talking about the second wave or another, because, while it is true that in the first post-war years, the authors of so-called camp publications were primarily prisoners and people who had some experience or a relative who was detained in the concentration camp. However, there were also publications written at that time by the first experts, those who came here to document the crimes. But yes, these were indeed mostly books closely associated with experience, with the fact that someone had lived, survived, seen and learned about incidents and events that occurred in the camp. Later on, I think this second wave ought to be defined by a slightly earlier phenomenon, that is, the moment the subject began to be explored by people who met former prisoners, became part of their social circles and wrote about either their current lives or experience. Nevertheless, these books remained close to the authentic experience of Auschwitz. While this phenomenon we are faced with at the moment is perhaps not new since fictional books about Auschwitz have been written before, for such cases are known; nevertheless, the scale of the phenomenon indicates that something has indeed happened at the moment that has made these fictional books, written in complete detachment from that real-life experience, increasingly abundant. These books are not strictly memoirs; they are written by people for whom a meeting with a former prisoner was an episode or the encounter with the subject of Auschwitz was a short-lived episode, which they decided to commit to paper. We are referring here to publications by, among others, Ms Morris and Mr Dempsey. They differ from those published to date because they possess features of a novel that are not the written experience of a prisoner but merely supplemented with data from documents or other sources. However, these are books characterised by a narrative typical for novels, that is, literary fiction. I believe their biggest problem is that the authors of these books fill in the gaps in the witness's narrative. It is evident that whenever someone recounts their camp experience, it is fragmentary. This fragmentary nature results both from the imperfect memory and the fact that prisoners couldn't have been familiar with all phenomena while in the camp or all that was happening in the camp, nor could they have seen all of the elements of the camp or its entire areas. However, if the novel's action shifts to places or times that are inaccessible to prisoners, then the authors supplement these white spaces. However, in most cases, they do not supplement them based on sources or some in-depth knowledge about Auschwitz but instead based on their imagination, what they thought happened in the camp, what the camp's realities could have looked like and how certain phenomena could have unfolded.

It, therefore, prompts the question of how reading fiction, which to some extent borders on fact, may influence the reception of such a book. Can it cause a distortion, some misrepresentation of the story?

Speaking of reception, i.e., how readers react to these books - they are undoubtedly attractive to readers. It is probably due to the structure of these books, the form of the novels and the fact that they are generally written by persons somehow connected with the writing profession. These books are attractive because they affect the emotions; they are full of lively plots, easy and relatively quick to read. I refrain from saying light reading because the subject matter does not warrant it. Still, in comparison with authentic camp accounts by former prisoners, it should be noted that this is relatively easy reading and in some way meets expectations. Evidence that these books are indeed very well received is, for instance, their sale, the extent to which they are advertised, and the fact that they are available everywhere. They are not only available in professional bookshops, but practically everywhere you can buy a book, at the moment, with Auschwitz in the title. They are widely available because they are extremely popular. However, if we reflect on how such literature influences the perception of Auschwitz as a historic site, as a place where something fundamental happened in the history of humanity,- Such books greatly falsify history, and it is not a matter of introducing fictional characters into the authentic event as the existence of Auschwitz, nor is it a matter of introducing fictional events into this place, but rather a matter of presenting characters and events that could not possibly have taken place in Auschwitz as we know it from the accounts of former prisoners, archival sources and documents. Consequently, an inexperienced reader, who picks up a book like "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" or "The Secret of Auschwitz" and on its basis builds up an image of what happened in the camp, what everyday life was like for the prisoners, and what daily life was like for the SS men, as this theme is quite strongly emphasised in these books, will have an entirely unreliable image and totally detached from what actually transpired in the camp. These books introduce erroneous knowledge, and for such readers, later visits to the museum, seeing the site, or actually reading some accounts by former prisoners, will undoubtedly create great dissonance and a sense of misconception of this reality, a sense of inadequacy of what... what they learned earlier and what they later discover.

How, then, can the reader independently assess the value of such a text and what they need to pay attention to? And is it worth reading such literature at all?

The question of whether it's worth reading such books is complex because different readers and individuals have various goals and needs when they reach for books. If someone wants to learn something about Auschwitz, to gain reliable factual knowledge about this historical event, site and phenomenon, these books are certainly not the right choice. It is certainly not the right choice because knowledge built based on them will be entirely inconsistent with what actually happened. Appropriately, one could point to various errors which appear in these books. These are not merely factual errors, which in my opinion are probably the most irritating, that is, they sometimes contain wrongly dated phenomena, which basically... Well, this knowledge can be acquired by referring, for example, to Wikipedia and by verifying it using the Internet. Therefore, it is not some advanced research work that the author could not have performed, and sometimes they indeed contain grave errors. Take, for instance, the date of the massacre in Babi Yar, given in the book "Black and Purple", which is a year too early; this is a serious factual error. Dates of transports, and we are talking about transports of particular significance. If the protagonist of the book arrives in the first women's transport, the transport that initiated the existence of the women's camp at Auschwitz, then the erroneous dating of this transport is gross negligence, especially since this can be very quickly verified using the Internet, without having to delve into the literature. Thus, factual errors of this nature, varying significance and scale, provide the reader with misleading information. Another area, which is indeed greatly falsified is the creation of an overall picture of the realities that prevailed in the camp. Talking about what the prisoners in the camp did on a daily basis, what rights they had... is perhaps an overstatement... what their everyday life looked like. Honestly, we learn almost nothing about this subject from these books. In contrast, these books show prisoners who live outside the organisational structure of the camp: they are, for example, not permanently assigned to work commandos, and either do not work at all or we do not know if they work and where. If they do work, they are sometimes given independent positions, as in the case of "The Tattooist of Auschwitz", who was a member of the commando involved with the reception of prisoners; he was not a lonely island who tattooed on the SS men when ordered, but a member of a commando numbering a dozen or so, later even dozens, and worked with other prisoners. He had specified working hours and could not walk freely around the camp beyond these hours or enter the women's camp or go outside the camp at all. The prisoners portrayed in these books undertake activities that they actually couldn't do. For instance, in "Komanda Puff", there are scenes where a female prisoner walks the route from the main camp to Birkenau all by herself. She leaves in the morning before roll call because she has an errand to run in Birkenau. Such events described in the book may raise doubts in the reader, such as why the prisoner who went outside the gate did not simply escape. Such misrepresentations of reality make it difficult for the reader to understand what happened here and why these events could have happened at all.

Moreover, if a reader reaches for this type of book to learn about... something, ... about a historical fact, such as Auschwitz, then no, these books will certainly not make it easier for them, they will not be helpful, but on the contrary, may even be harmful. Conversely, a group of readers reach for a book just to spend some time with it, live someone else's life, and satiate the needs that art and literature are supposed to satisfy. So, if reading is simply supposed to be a pleasure and stir up some kind of emotion, then yes, but you can't expect to build a factual foundation on these books and hope to learn something from them, or refer to them later when explaining camp phenomena. You cannot argue, by citing the facts described in these books, such as the SS men could have saved more people, as described in the book, "The Angel of Auschwitz", that they could have led those children out, that the prisoners could have helped each other escape, because, after all, in "The Tattooist" it is clearly presented that these escapes were not that difficult, since one could flee from Auschwitz "by accident". These books are most certainly not reputable sources of knowledge.

Inexperienced readers, in particular, will find it difficult to understand the maze of today's literature with Auschwitz in the title or content. It is difficult to determine the authentic, factual and substantive value of such publications, which can indeed create a certain feeling of confusion. If I were to advise readers who... Of course, we are talking about readers who want to develop their knowledge about Auschwitz; I would suggest, first of all, that they read the classic memoirs about Auschwitz, which are available in abundance on the market. The first publications on Auschwitz were published as early as 1942. Copies or reprints of these are still available on the book market today. Many memoirs were written in the early postwar years. They include the memoirs of Father Augustyn and the memoirs of Seweryna Szmaglewska, which are admittedly quite similar because they were written in an immediate time perspective.Viktor Frankel's memoirs, among others, date from this period. If I am not mistaken, Miklós Nyiszli also wrote in the first post-war years. These are precious items, which indeed illustrate the very personal experience of the prisoners. Another wave of memoirs took place in the 1960s, followed by publications that continued to appear until the 1990s. Many books are available, and there is plenty to choose from. A reader interested in the fate of children may reach for publications by Bartnikowski or Halina Birenbaum. Those interested in the fate of women also have a wide range of camp memoirs. There are also memoirs of political and Jewish prisoners: Polish, Hungarian and French. Practically every aspect of camp reality is represented. I would therefore certainly recommend these publications above all because they are authentic, reliable and credible. I reckon that a knowledgeable reader will easily notice some inconsistencies in the contemporary literature on Auschwitz and will be able to make their own assessment, at least to some extent: Whether the book is truly written reliably or, perhaps, contains many errors, inaccuracies or simply fabrications that have nothing to do with the event, or the Auschwitz experience. Another seemingly and relatively effective way of checking a book's credibility is by looking at the author's persona. By reading not necessarily any previous books, but the author's biography itself and familiarising oneself with the author's work to date: What has the author written to date? How did the author write? How much has the author written? Also, the author's educational background may be relevant; admittedly, even here, it is not difficult to make mistakes, since the author of "Black and Purple" is a historian by training and still did not avoid quite significant factual errors. However, if read an author's current oeuvre and discover that the author in question has written four books in two years on the subject of Auschwitz, then It is obvious that these books cannot be the result of in-depth research on a given subject; all the more so if each of them deals with different aspects of the camp's existence and lives of camp prisoners. Again, in this case, it is certainly worth considering and simply reviewing what the author has created so far, including how it has been assessed. Several authors of these books claim that their goal is to commemorate the victims, preserve history and pay tribute to those who were murdered or imprisoned in Auschwitz. However, the degree of negligence, including the way certain phenomena are described, proves otherwise. The authors do not shy away from exploiting certain gruesome phenomena of camp life. In addition to using certain extremely tragic incidents that took place, they very often invent their own. I have the feeling that these books, to a certain extent, do not only affront but yet again dehumanise the victims. Insofar as we learn, among other things, from the text of the former commandant Rudolf Hess, or Borowski's text, that there were cases of cannibalism in the camp, it is obviously exploited and exaggerated in the book. In other words, it is no longer the case that prisoners eat the flesh of corpses, but that they eat their colleagues alive. This macabre and such exaggeration and overstatement of certain incidents described in such a way as if they were the norm in Auschwitz do not only distort the image of what happened in Auschwitz but also offend the victims. It presents them in such a one-dimensional way. One visible phenomenon in contemporary publications is their saturation with sexual themes. And this is a phenomenon that is probably hard to explain other than an attempt to attract readers. Virtually every book of this trend that I have read so far features sexual themes. These plots are shown in a heavily brutalised and purely carnal manner. They are quite vulgar; some scenes even seem so, entirely pornographic. With so many such interpolations in the literature, the reader may believe that sexual needs and sexual life, in general, were almost of prime importance in the camp. Yet we know from both medical and social research, and also from former prisoners' memoirs, that the physical state of the prisoners: starvation, exhaustion from work, horrible condition, illness, coupled with the constant stress and feeling of threat to life, as well as the prevailing conditions in the camp, effectively suppressed sexual needs. Such incidents did, of course, take place, and some sort of intimate relations between male and female prisoners did occur. However, as I say, these were individual, incidental cases; they did not constitute the norm. However, this type of literature introduces this theme as if it were a predominant phenomenon, which is... simply out of place... inelegant and inappropriate with respect to Auschwitz. Speaking of contemporary literature, the construction of novels and the introduction of fictional plots, another issue worth mentioning in this context: As is often the case with leading literary characters, the main protagonists in these books are usually given prominence, and the focus is mostly on their fate. However, one thing that is very often missing is the relationship between prisoners. To survive at Auschwitz, prisoners had to take part in such a social exchange network. I am not referring here to the exchange of material items such as food or clothing: someone has acquired something, shared it with others. But what I am talking about here is the exchange of information, psychological support, simply being part of this community. They were mostly small groups of prisoners who, regardless of their size, assisted one another. And this, according to testimonies of former prisoners, was the key to survival. An inmate who was alone in the camp had no chance whatsoever. In these books, however, the characters are very often depicted as solitary islands who struggle alone and have minimum relationships; but they are devoid of an in-depth description of what life was like between the prisoners. What's more, the narrative is very often delivered so that these leading characters appear in the background, but this backdrop is irrelevant. And this background that is created here is mass extermination - the death of thousands of people. In these books, however, the reader focuses primarily on the fate of the main character. The reader yearns for the main character to survive, succeed, and for their efforts to end in success. Meanwhile, the mass extermination of thousands of people becomes insignificant, escapes attention. Such is the structure of the novel, which makes the reader adhere only to the fate of the two protagonists, who usually manage to survive. Here, the reader's need for a happy ending is satisfied. Nevertheless, the absence of a happy ending in Auschwitz appears to be of secondary and tertiary importance or absolutely irrelevant. Auschwitz stands for over a million murdered people and further thousands of broken lives. People who survived Auschwitz often struggle for the rest of their lives with the repercussions of their stay in the camp, with social, health and emotional consequences. Therefore, to structure a novel so that the reader is left with the conviction that someone survived Auschwitz and after that their life must have been beautiful is simply hypocritical.