Uncanny Homelands: Disability, Race, and the Politics of Memory Susanne C. Knittel Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 ©2011 Susanne C. Knittel All Rights Reserved Abstract Uncanny Homelands: Disability, Race, and the Politics of Memory Susanne C. Knittel This dissertation is an interdisciplinary and comparative study of German and Italian memory culture after 1945. It examines how the interaction between memorials, litera‐ ture, historiography, and popular culture shapes a society’s memory and identity. I focus on two marginalized aspects of the memory of the Holocaust: the Nazi “euthanasia” program directed against the mentally ill and disabled, and the Fascist persecution of Slovenes, Croats, and Jews in and around Trieste. I couple my analysis of memorials to these atrocities with an examination of the literary and artistic representations of the traumatic events in question. My work thus expands the definition of site of memory to encompass not only the specific geographical location of a historical event but also the assemblage of cultural artefacts and discourses that accumulate around it over time. A “site” therefore denotes a physical and a cultural space that is continuously re‐defined and rewritten. The two memorials I analyze, Grafeneck and the Risiera di San Sabba, bookend the Holocaust, revealing a trajectory from the systematic elimination of socially undesirable people, such as the mentally ill and disabled, to the full‐scale racial purifica‐ tion of the “final solution.” The lack of survivor testimony about these sites has been a major factor in their continued marginalization within the discourse on Holocaust mem‐ ory, which is why it is all the more important to consider the way these events figure in other genres and other media, such as novels, short stories, poems, biographies, TV‐ dramas, and theatre plays. This approach allows me to shed new light on canonical works such as Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum or the TV‐Series Holocaust and to bring into focus works that have so far not received the critical attention they deserve. Through my analysis I show how certain authors participate in a process of vicarious witnessing, lending their voice to those who were not able or permitted to speak for themselves. By bringing these underrepresented sites and memories into focus, I not only argue for a more inclusive memory culture but also reveal how the politics of commemoration con‐ tinue to lead to the exclusion of persecuted minorities. Thus, my dissertation partici‐ pates in the broader project within Holocaust studies of opening the discourse to de‐ particularized, transnational perspectives and other victim groups. Contents List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................ v Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ vii Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Uncanny Homelands ..................................................................................................... 8 Parallel Histories .......................................................................................................... 12 The War on Difference ................................................................................................ 19 Chapter Overview ....................................................................................................... 29 A note on translations ................................................................................................. 36 Chapter 1 Remembering Euthanasia: Grafeneck between the Past and the Future ..... 37 Grafeneck’s Past .......................................................................................................... 46 Grafeneck Today .......................................................................................................... 59 The Memory of Grafeneck .......................................................................................... 62 Grafeneck in the Future .............................................................................................. 76 Chapter 2 Bridging the Silence: Towards a Literary Memory of (Nazi) Euthanasia ....... 92 “Holocaust” and Euthanasia ....................................................................................... 96 Bridging the Silence: A Dialogue between Disciplines .............................................. 109 i The Sacrifice of the Sage: Disabled Enabler Figures from Böll to Hein ..................... 115 Daniel and Adam ................................................................................................. 115 Waiting for the Water ......................................................................................... 126 Christoph Hein’s Marlene ................................................................................... 130 Oskar and Schugger Leo ...................................................................................... 137 Bridging the Silence, Part Two: Vicarious Witnessing ............................................... 151 Into the Blue ........................................................................................................ 155 Finding Emma ..................................................................................................... 170 The Life and Opinions of a Swabian Eulenspiegel ............................................... 180 In There/Out Here ............................................................................................... 186 Chapter 3 Lethal Trajectories: Perpetrators between Grafeneck and Trieste .............. 195 From Grafeneck to Trieste ......................................................................................... 203 The End of the War ................................................................................................... 211 Perpetrators in Post‐War Germany ........................................................................... 216 Perpetrators in Post‐War Italy ................................................................................... 220 The Two Exhibitions .................................................................................................. 231 Grafeneck ............................................................................................................ 233 ii The Risiera di San Sabba ..................................................................................... 237 Education after Auschwitz ........................................................................................ 241 Coda: Rest in Peace? ................................................................................................. 246 Chapter 4 Black Holes and Revelations: an “Italian Tragedy”..................................... 254 Days of Memory and Forgetting ............................................................................... 254 Fascism in Venezia Giulia .......................................................................................... 266 The Risiera di San Sabba ........................................................................................... 278 The Risiera in the Past ......................................................................................... 287 The Risiera after 1945 ......................................................................................... 295 The Risiera Trial ................................................................................................... 308 Visiting the Risiera Today .................................................................................... 312 The Foiba di Basovizza .............................................................................................. 322 The Parco della Rimembranza ................................................................................... 332 Chapter 5 No Place Like Home: Trieste and the Language of Belonging ..................... 339 Saints and Sinners: The Holocaust on Italian Television ........................................... 339 Manufactured History: Il cuore nel pozzo ................................................................. 351 Uncanny Homeland: Pahor’s Trieste ......................................................................... 362 iii A Question of Belonging: Fulvio Tomizza and Liminal Identity ................................. 383 Literature and the Risiera .......................................................................................... 402 The Living Word on the Stage: Rižarna and I me ciamava per nome: 44.787 .......... 416 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 438 A Day in the Life of a Fascist ...................................................................................... 438 The Tree of History .................................................................................................... 442 Multidirectionality Internal and External .................................................................. 444 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 452 iv List of Illustrations Fig. 1 A view of Grafeneck from the South