About the Project

Introduction About the Project This handbook is the fruit of the cooperation of a Polish-Czech-German team of researchers that has been working together for more than ten years. Starting on the in- itiative of Prof. em. Reinhard Ibler in May 2010, when specialists in Jewish literature, history, and culture from the universities of Giessen, Lodz, and Prague first met, the project has produced nine workshops and six publications to date. Researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan joined the project in 2015. Our group consists mainly of Slavicists and comparative literature researchers who decided to explore the East-Central European literatures about the Holocaust and persecution of Jews during World War II, first by a chronological approach and second in terms of aesthetics.1 Throughout our meetings, we noticed a gap between the literary production of the Slavonic countries where the Holocaust mainly took place and recognition of these works outside this community. We want to increase the visibility and show the versa- tility of these literatures in the academic representation of the Holocaust in the arts. Mainly émigré authors (like Jerzy Kosinski, for his Painted Bird, 1965) received interna- tional attention because there was no language barrier right from the beginning. The underrepresentation is clear from the numbers: the Reference Guide to Holocaust Lit- erature (Young, Riggs, 2002) presents 225 authors but only two of them were of Czech origin, three of Slovak. For Polish the situation looks slightly better: 23 authors. In Ho- locaust Literature. An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work (Kremer, 2003), out of 312 entries, we count 31 Polish, 3 Czech, and not a single Slovak entry. Sicher’s Holo- caust Novelists (2004) includes three Polish and four Czech authors out of 43 articles. The entry about Holocaust literature in The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (Hayes, Roth, 2012) mentions three Polish authors but no Czech or Slovak ones. Simi- 1 Ibler, R., Golebiowski, A., eds. (2012). Ausgewählte Probleme der polnischen und tschechischen Holo- caustliteratur und -kultur: Materialien des Internationalen Workshops in Gießen, 27.–28. Mai 2010. München: Sagner. Holý, J., ed. (2012). The Representation of the Shoah in Literature, Theatre and Film in Central Europe: 1950s and 1960s. Praha: Akropolis. Holý, J., ed., (2012). The Representation of the Shoah in Literature and Film in Central Europe: 1970s and 1980s. Praha: Akropolis. Ibler, R., ed. (2014). Der Ho- locaust in den mitteleuropäischen Literaturen und Kulturen seit 1989. The Holocaust in the Central European Literatures and Cultures since 1989. Stuttgart: ibidem. Gazda, G. et al., eds. (2014). The Repre- sentation of the Shoah in Literature and Film in Central Europe: the post-war Period = Die Darstellung der Shoah in Literatur und Film in Mitteleuropa: die ersten Nachkriegsjahre = Reprezentacje Shoah w litera- turze i filmie w Europie Środkowej: lata powojenne. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Holý. J., ed. (2015). Aspects of Genres in the Holocaust Literatures in Central Europe. Die Gattungsaspekte der Holocaustliteratur in Mitteleuropa. Praha: Akropolis. Ibler, R., ed. (2016). Der Holocaust in den mittel- europäischen Literaturen und Kulturen: Probleme der Poetisierung und Ästhetisierung. Stuttgart: ibidem. Firlej, A. et al., eds. (2017). Recepcja literackich i artystycznych dzieł o Szoa. Poznańskie Studia Slawis- tyczne 12, Poznań: Wydawnictwo PTPN. Open Access. © 2021 Elisa-Maria Hiemer et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-001 2 Introduction larly, John K. Roth’s Holocaust Literature I–II (Roth, 2008) considers three Polish, two Czech, and not a single Slovak work. The notion of “Polish”, “Czech”, and “Slovak” literature is especially difficult to define in the case of Holocaust literature, since a large number of Jewish (and non-Jewish) writers emigrated and switched to the lan- guages of their new home countries. Counting the authors and their works, we applied quite loose criteria such as the country of origin or usage of their mother tongue. Why Eastern European Literatures and Why Fiction? One of the crucial questions the editors’ board had to answer is who to consider in our publication. The ongoing debates about postcolonial destruction of binary identity patterns also affect literature and its creators. Hence, we decided to consider authors of Jewish and non-Jewish origin to depict different ways of perception and narration styles. Additionally, we focus on works originally published in Polish, Czech, or Slo- vak. Surely, some of the names in the handbook might sound familiar to persons dealing with literary Holocaust research but we are convinced that East-Central European literature is underrecognised and remains widely unknown even in translation. This leads to the erroneous assumption that Eastern Europe began Holocaust remembrance only after 1989 (Brumlik, Sauerland, 2010, p. 24), creating a perspective on East-Central European cultures of remembrance that often goes with a subtle notion of “Western” supremacy. American scholars often consider Jewish culture in Europe (and especially in post-Communist states) to be virtual or artificial (Gruber 1994, 1996, 2002; Kugelmass, Bukowska, 2008). One reason for this might be lack of knowl- edge about the cultural and political context that underwent crucial changes within a short period. With this introduction we aim to help readers understand the main fac- tors that influenced literary production in pre- and post-Communist countries by nam- ing historical milestones. Another reason is the fact that Holocaust literature is still rated by its authenticity and exposed to the pressure of legitimacy (Pfohlmann, 2010, p. 26; Ziębińska-Witek, 2005). Although the newest literature cannot be read as testi- monial literature, researchers often ascribe the obligation to remember “the right way”. Fortunately, the literary works of the third generation show how important it is to use fictional devices not only to get an idea of the past but also to add new perspec- tives on the power of art that “translates” the temporal and generational gap into its own images. It is astonishing that the discussion is not finished, although as early as 1988, James E. Young argued in his Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation that even survivor literature cannot meet the authenticity criteria since every process of writing is creating (poesis) not imitation (mimesis) (Young, 1988, p. 17). Nevertheless, innovative or fictionalised narrations (→ The Flytrap Factory, → The Devil’s Workshop) often provoke harsh criticism and are labelled as “Holocaust-Kitsch” (Leociak, 2010 or Horák, 2009). The editors do not want to judge literature but give you, the readers, a compilation of Holocaust fiction About the Project 3 from the last eight decades and invite you to read, compare, and draw your own con- clusions. It is one of the main tasks of literary studies to categorise works but the “fact and fiction controversy”–as our team calls it – is hard to pacify. We include examples of works primarily labelled as factual literature or documentary in academic discourse (such as → Confession, → Trap with a Green Fence , → I Didn’t Want to Be a Jew) but we are convinced that, taking a closer look at the devices the texts use, you can see that they should not be regarded only as historical references to the Jewish persecution and Holocaust but also use their narrative strategy to broaden the possibilities for speaking about history and to encourage the reader to make up their own mind about the literary truth. At the same time, due to the growing spatial-temporal distance, literary devices are gaining more attention since they are the only means of dealing with the topic for the younger generation of writers (Krawczyńska, 2008; Cuber, 2013; Ibler, 2016, Artwińska, Tippner, 2017). As the following sketch of literary history will show, there were and always are plenty of lyric, dramatic, or prosaic expressions to commu- nicate about the Holocaust.2 Practical Information and Acknowledgements The entries contain practical information (about translations, film adaptations, the author and further publications of his or her authorship related to the topic) but mainly focus on a short summary of the plot and an overview of the main issues and problems in each work. We pay attention to the comparative aspect, which means that the articles contain cross-references, both to other entries in the book (marked by an arrow signed →) and to well-known examples from literary history. Every entry ends with a short, se- lected bibliography that – if possible – includes not only Polish, Czech or Slovak but also Englishreferencestoencouragereaderstofurtherstudy.Commonmotifs,topics,charac- ters,situationsandliterarydevicesmentionedinthebooks(forinstance“Aryanpapers”, aryanization, Jewish nose, postmemory, Jozef Tiso, grotesque, shtetl, etc.) includes the IndexofTopics,Motifs,Images,Places,andDevicesattheendoftheHandbook.Seealso here below, p. 31. Such contextualization will be indispensable for researchers in other fields who are not familiar with the historical and sociocultural contexts. All entries in our handbook are edited in accordance with academic standards, but also written in a way that encourages the broader public to learn more about this topic. We

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