Mark Phillip Brodie

“FROM DARWIN TO THE DEATH CAMPS:” A COLLAGE OF HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION FOCUSING ON PERPETRATOR ATROCITY DISCOURSE IN LITERATURE, DRAMA AND FILM. Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. _________________________ Mark Phillip Brodie Certificate of Approval: James E. Ryan Jonathan W. Bolton, Chair Associate Professor Associate Professor English English Renate S. Latimer George T. Flowers Associate Professor Interim Dean Foreign Language Graduate School “FROM DARWIN TO THE DEATH CAMPS:” A COLLAGE OF HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION FOCUSING ON PERPETRATOR ATROCITY DISCOURSE IN LITERATURE, DRAMA AND FILM. Mark Phillip Brodie A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama August 4, 2007 “FROM DARWIN TO THE DEATH CAMPS:” A COLLAGE OF HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION FOCUSING ON PERPETRATOR ATROCITY DISCOURSE IN LITERATURE, DRAMA AND FILM. Mark Phillip Brodie Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ____________________________ Signature of Author ____________________________ Date of Graduation iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT “FROM DARWIN TO THE DEATH CAMPS:” A COLLAGE OF HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION FOCUSING ON PERPETRATOR ATROCITY DISCOURSE IN LITERATURE, DRAMA AND FILM. Mark Phillip Brodie Doctor of Philosophy, August 4, 2007 (M.A., Bowling Green State University, 2002) (M.A., Clemson University, 1999) (B.A., Virginia Commonwealth University, 1994) (B.A., Virginia Commonwealth University, 1993) 339 Typed Pages Directed by Jonathan Bolton In this dissertation my plan is to take a collage of representational forms that deal with the subject of the Holocaust and to point at the discourse of the perpetrator as possibly a more postmodern form of representing an event that many would term unrepresentable. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once stated that the holocaust defies imagination, and when he was queried about the problem that arises from perpetrator discourse his response was “the perpetrators are someone else’s concern.” This dissertation tends to concern itself with the perpetrators and how they used the language of atrocity to do something that is still today viewed as horrific, for most of the iv perpetrators saw their tasks-the genocide of the Jews-as simply as a task that had to be completed. By this “task” I mean, as for example, in one of the films chosen for this project Conspiracy and a text, Commandant of Auschwitz, shows us is the completely normal bureaucratic essence of the Nazi architects of genocide and the banality and completely “normal” chain of command that they all followed in the destruction of European Jewry. This “normalcy” of the chain of command is evident in all the texts, films and plays chosen for this dissertation, and all show in the discourse of the perpetrator a tenet of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison, that tenet being, the “legal process of judge, jury, and executioner are proved valid and those who rule are to be obeyed” (10). This dissertation wants to show that for representative art dealing with the Holocaust a view at the institutions that allowed for the language of discipline and punishment to be rationale for eugenics, nationalist fervor and governmental anti-Semitism as the political platform for national socialism, could serve as a more representative model than what we usually get when one represents the Holocaust, that being a story told completely from the victim standpoint and then what we get too much of is helpless Jews and monster-Nazis. This dissertation shows the only too frightening nature of the un-monster-like Nazis and when this project does use certain victim testimony in literature, drama and film, it shows then victim’s trauma more in the sense of survivor guilt and outsidedness more than any type of helpless victim. In the larger area of perpetrator discourse in literature, film and drams this dissertation hopes to evince the representative need for future art forms dealing with the holocaust to understand that if the Holocaust is the paradigmatic event of all discourse on atrocity then v those who attempt to approach it in future art and discourse should be forewarned that this event defies representation but also screams to be remembered from beyond the barbed wire of Auschwitz. A great deal of criticism of representation of the Holocaust in the areas of my collage center on the presumption that what actually happened in the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Birkenau etc., can be known, understood and communicated., This dissertation argues that what “cannot be communicated,” the type of signifying evil that can only be demonstrated in the covert language “inside the language” of national socialism and Hitler allows readers a better forum for possible representation. It would be too easy to view the “Final solution of the Jewish Question” as the machinations of Hitler--the modern “Mephistopheles”--and his Nazi minions as just a nation of jack-booted fascist “Faust’s,” but I think when one comes to power, like a Hitler, and decides to ensure public good by force and selective uncivil liberties, then want happened to the Jews during the Holocaust may be better “understood” by viewing even more closer the language of “ordinary Germans,” who became “extraordinary murderers” during the Holocaust. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Dr. Jon Bolton for his guidance and tireless help (“Audenesque exhaustive editing”) with this project. I would also like to thank Dr. James E. Ryan for his steady influence and his “understanding as my employer,” Dr. Renate Latimer, “my guide to Wannsee and all things Deutschland,” and Dr. Kenneth Noe, who speedily and effectively, “marched through my project like Sherman through Georgia,” for their support and assistance in this dissertation. I am very proud to have your names always linked to my degree. Also, a very special thank you to Dr. George C. Longest, of Virginia Commonwealth University, for setting me on this path, and kudos to Dr. Don Callen at Bowling Green State University, and Doctor William Koon and Dr. Art Young at Clemson University for all their advice, encouragement and faith. Most of all, I thank my mother for her timeless devotion and support throughout all my academic endeavors. vii Style manual or journal used: Modern Language Association (MLA) Computer software used: Microsoft Word viii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION-“In Auschwitz there was only a wasn’t.” .......................................1 Notes to Chapter I ........................................................................................................25 II. HOLOCAUST FICTION AND POETRY ..................................................................27 Kurt Vonnegut—Mother Night-“Be careful what you pretend to be.”.......................27 Edward Wallant—The Pawnbroker and Saul Bellow—Mr. Sammler’s Planet ..........50 Sylvia Plath—Daddy and Lady Lazarus and W.A. Snodgrass—The Fuehrer Bunker82 Notes to Chapter II.....................................................................................................101 III. PERPETRATOR/ SURVIVOR LITERATURE-NON-FICTION ............................106 Perpetrator Literature—Introduction.........................................................................106 Rudolph Hoess—The Commandant of Auschwitz—“What I did was right.” ..........119 Hannah Arendt-Eichmann in Jerusalem—“I was an administrator, nothing else” ..131 Albert Speer—Inside the Third Reich—“He neglected his knowing.”......................141 Survivor Literature—Introduction.............................................................................154 Filip Muller—Eyewitness Auschwitz—“Voices from the Sonderkommando.” ........169 Elie Wiesel—Night-“The unimaginable Holocaust.” ...............................................180 Notes to Chapter III ...................................................................................................193 IV. HOLOCAUST DRAMA ...........................................................................................197 Introduction................................................................................................................197 ix Robert Shaw—The Man in the Glass Booth—“The guilt of surviving.” ..................207 Rolf Hochhuth-The Deputy—“A Theater of Anger.”................................................221 Martin Sherman—Bent—“Persecution of the Pink Triangle.”..................................233 Notes to Chapter IV ...................................................................................................264 V. HOLOCAUST FILM—CONCLUSION...................................................................270 Introduction................................................................................................................270 Conspiracy—Frank Pierson—“Murder Inc. at Wannsee.”........................................281 The Night Porter—Liliana Cavani—“The Horribleness of the perverse other.” ......294 Downfall—Oliver Hirschbiegel—“Voices from the Bunker and Beyond.”..............310 Night and Fog—Alain Resnais and Shoah-Claude Lanzmann—“Docu-horrors.” ...322

Load more