Sprache:
Deutsch
Erscheinungsjahr:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
German Quarterly
Angaben zur Quelle:
71,4 (1998) 343-352
Schlagwort(e):
Hilsenrath, Edgar.
;
Benjamin, Walter,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
German literature History and criticism
Kurzfassung:
Uses Benjamin's distinctions between history and chronicle, the novel and storytelling, to analyze Hilsenrath's novel. In the novel's prologue, the Jews of Pohodna, ignorant of their fate and still hopeful, are on a train taking them to a death camp. On the roof of the train, the Rebbe has hidden the shtetl's most precious possession - its memories and stories. Since the train has stopped for seven days on a siding, history - the extermination of these Jews - has stopped too; and the voices of history tell the stories to the wind. In the epilogue, the train restarts and history resumes. In the body of the novel, Jossel Wassermann, born and raised in Pohodna and now owner of a matzo factory in Switzerland, tells his story on his deathbed, a day before the start of World War II. He hopes, vainly, that at least his body will return to the shtetl. Suggests that the work illustrates Benjamin's thesis that history is coherent and belongs to the victors; novels describe the sufferings of lone individuals, whereas stories are incoherent and express the experiences of individuals in a community, remembered in moments of danger. In Hilsenrath's novel, the storytellers are aware that as Jews they have always been oppressed; but in the present they meet this oppression with humor and with hope for the future.
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