Language:
English
Year of publication:
2016
Titel der Quelle:
Partial Answers
Angaben zur Quelle:
14,2(2016) 275-298
Keywords:
Ka-tzetnik 135633, Criticism and interpretation
;
Hebrew literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Moral and ethical aspects
Abstract:
Disagrees with the observations made by literary critics (Omer Bartov, Iris Milner, etc.) that the Jewish heroes of Ka-Tzetnik's novels fail the moral challenge as they give up their human values and brutalize each other in a violent struggle to survive. Perusing the novels from the "Salamandra" sextet - "Salamandra", "House of Dolls", and "His Name Was Piepel", shows numerous motifs of resistance to the Nazi power in them through compassionate reciprocity, adherence to social structures, and moral heroism. Ka-Tzetnik presents the tension between good and evil to the foreground. The central characters of his novels occupy the pole of moral good, while the negative characters are relegated to the background. The instances of utter evil occupy relatively brief textual spaces and constitute a lateral episode in the novels' overall narration of life in the ghetto and camp. Ka-Tzetnik expresses empathy for those trapped in the inescapable collapse of solidarity in the background of the story. Ka-Tzetnik's rendition of Jewish moral and spiritual resistance during the Holocaust was overlooked at the period when Israeli society did not realize the existence of such a resistance; later this side of his earlier novels was overshadowed by his later, more pessimistic novels.
DOI:
10.1353/pan.2016.0021
URL:
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