Over seventy years after the fallout of the Nazi genocide, depicting the Shoah continues to serve as a subject of widespread debate. Balancing the aesthetics of representation with historical accountability poses unique challenges to both readers and writers of Holocaust literature. In its extensive considerations of time and place, in its troubling of the conventional limitations of the Canadian novel, and in its suggestive possibilities both inside and outside of the ethnic mainstream, the genre is one of ample opportunity — a prospect that entails enormous responsibility. The difficulty of finding the appropriate language to represent the horrors of the Shoah is the central subject of this thesis, which focuses on interpretive responsibility in Mavis Gallant’s “The Pegnitz Junction” (1973). It situates the novella in both a theoretical and Canadian literary context, examines Gallant’s understanding of the ethics of aestheticizing the event, provides a full-length study of the story, and attempts to fill some of the gaps in critical scholarship by drawing attention to the multidimensionality of the text’s portrayal of a post-Auschwitz world. I look closely at how Gallant’s work prompts a suspension of logic and normalcy, and in turn reconceptualizes the novella insofar as its indirection causes her readership to contemplate whether Holocaust responsibility is, in the words of D.G. Myers, “to be shared by [readers], despite the fact that they are not to blame” (270). I suggest that the novella is a medium in which refusal to provide logical explanations for the Holocaust through aesthetic representation not only allows audiences to ponder the implications of humanity’s capacity to preserve and erase historical memory, but also causes them to consider how human beings ought to respond responsibly to the ramifications of historical trauma. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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Ladislav Fuks' works are under-recognized in English-speaking academic discourse. He is a valuable contributor not only to the Holocaust Literature genre, but also to film and literature in general. His two English-translated works, Mr. Theodore Mundstock and The Cremator, as well as the film adaptation of The Cremator, examine the role imagination can play in art that addresses atrocity, allowing for a heightened subjective impact on the audience. I critically and comparatively examine Fuks' work to establish his value to literature and Holocaust art. In the first chapter, I frame my argument with questions of art's abilities to represent atrocity and provide relevant background information relating to Fuks' and his experience in wartime Prague. In Chapter Two, I closely read Mr. Theodore Mundstock, concentrating specifically on Fuks' use of metaphor, presentation of incredulity, and commentary on the imagination's capabilities in confronting terror. Chapter Three compares Mr. Theodore Mundstock to the "Momik" section of David Grossman's See Under: Love, focusing on similarities between the title characters. Chapter Four examines Fuks' use of the grotesque in The Cremator and its film adaptation. Chapter Five compares Fuks' works to Aharon Appelfeld's novel Badenheim 1939, emphasizing each author's reliance on the audience's retrospective prescience, which provides a significant psychological impact and avoids contributing to the over-saturation of Holocaust information on the public. I conclude that Fuks should be more highly regarded and widely recognized both academically and in popular culture, as he exhibits similar features as other, more celebrated Holocaust writers, and his innovative contributions defend the value of literature in representing atrocity. / Master of Arts

In his 1987 essay "Canadian Poetry After Auschwitz," Michael Greenstein argues that A.M. Klein's mock-heroic poem, The Hitleriad (1944), ultimately fails to portray the severity and tragedy of the Holocaust because "it lacks the necessary historical distance for coping with the enormity" of the event (1). Greenstein's criticism is interesting because it suggests that in order for a writer to adequately represent the horrors of a traumatic event like the Holocaust it is "necessary" for him to be distanced from the event. While Greenstein specifically addresses historical (or temporal) distance, Canadian authors writing about the Holocaust have also, inevitably, had to negotiate their geographical and cultural distance from the historical event as well. Not surprisingly, their works tend to be immensely self-reflexive in nature, reflecting an awareness of the questions of authority and problems of representation that have shaped critical thinking about Holocaust literature for over half a century. This dissertation examines the role that distance has played in the creation and critical understanding of representative works of Canadian Holocaust literature. It begins with an extensive analysis of the poetry and prose of geographically-distanced poet A.M. Klein, whose work is unique in the Canadian literary canon in that it mirrors the shifting psychological state of members of the Canadian Jewish community as news of the Holocaust slowly trickled into Canada. This is followed by a discussion of the Holocaust texts of Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen, both of whom experimented with increasingly graphic Holocaust imagery in their works in response to the increasingly more horrifying information about the concentration camps that entered the Canadian public conscience in the 1960s. The dissertation then turns its attention to the uniquely post-memorial and semi-autobiographical works of two children of Holocaust survivors, Bernice Eisenstein and J.J. Steinfeld, before focusing on the Holocaust works of Timothy Findley and Yann Martel, both of whom produce highly metafictional novels in order to respond to the questions of appropriation and ethical representation that often surround works of Holocaust fiction created by non-Jewish writers. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of Anne Michaels' novel Fugitive Pieces—a text that addresses all three types of distance that stand at the center of this dissertation, and that illustrates many of the strategies of representation that Canadian writers have adopted in their attempts to negotiate, highlight, erase, and embrace the distance that separates them from the Holocaust.

II Title History interpretation in Fred Wander's literary works Abstract The topic of this diploma thesis is an interpretation of events during the Second World War in Fred Wander's literary work, an important representative of German written literature in the past century. The first chapter presents Fred Wander's life and work and is based on Wander's own autobiography and interviews. The following chapters are dedicated to individual analysis of his three writings: Der siebente Brunnen, Ein Zimmer in Paris and Hotel Baalbek. Wander especially focuses on mediating concrete personal life stories during that epoch. Hotel Haalbek work captures a situation during the first years of the war in the southern France. Der siebente Brunnen describes prisoners' lives in a concentration camp. Wander dedicates Ein Zimmer in Paris work to the topic of how to cope with war experience. The main target of this diploma thesis is about an interpretation of selected themes which are crucial for the mentioned works. It also points to the importance of history rendering in the writings by the author. Keywords Fred Wander, holocaust literature, the Second World War, judaism

abstract: This thesis analyzes the unsettling presence of the Holocaust in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl (1980), Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2013). Characters in these texts struggle to maintain a stable sense of what it means to be Jewish in America outside of a relationship to the Holocaust. This leaves the characters only able to form negative associations about what it means to live with the memory of the Holocaust or to over-identify so heavily with the memory that they can’t lead a normal life. These authors construct a re-formed memory of the Holocaust in ways that prompt a new focus on how permanently intertwined the Holocaust and Jewish identity are. In this context, re-formed means the way Jewish American writers have reconstructed the connection between Jewish identity and its relation to the Holocaust in ways that highlight issues of over-identification and negative identity associations. By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, these authors construct a re-formed memory that allows for the formation of Jewish American identity as permanently bound with constant Holocaust preoccupation, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust itself. The authors’ treatment of issues surrounding Jewish identity contribute to the genre of post-Holocaust literature, which focuses on re-forming the discussion about present day Jewish American connection to the Holocaust. Giving voice to the Holocaust in new ways provides an opportunity for current and future generations of Jewish Americans to again consider the continued importance of the Holocaust as a historical event within the Jewish community. In a world that is once again becoming increasingly anti-semitic as a result of the current political climate, white supremacist riots, desecration of Jewish grave sites, and shootings at temples, the discussion that these texts open up is increasingly important and should remain at the forefront of American consciousness. The research in this thesis reveals that through the process of Holocaust memory constantly being re-formed through the work of these Jewish American authors, its continued influence on Jewish American culture is not forgotten. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2020

The aim of the present inquiry was to identify significant factors which had impact on the lives of Miriam Darvas and the protagonist Liesel Meminger, linked to the circumstances of the Holocaust in their respective narratives Farewell to Prague and The Book Thief. Through the investigation of the living conditions impacting the individuals, Maslow’s Theory of Motivation is applied in order to find the factors hindering the possibility for Miriam and Liesel to develop in their personal selves. Simultaneously, an educational aim followed the study in order to clarify the pedagogical possibilities of using the narratives in an EFL classroom.    The findings of the present inquiry indicate great similarities in the change of circumstances between Miriam and Liesel due to the war, which consequently impacted the individuals in their basis of developing their personal self. The results disclosed several instances in which the surroundings of Darvas and Meminger hindered their ability to develop and deprived them of the necessities needed, according to Maslow’s theory. However, they also disclosed indications of finding inner strength by self-improvement through education. Therefore, the findings from the present study supports an area of pedagogical possibilities using the narratives in the EFL classroom, such as enhancing the knowledge and understanding for the living conditions during the Holocaust, providing alternative reading suggestions to the commonly used Holocaust literature, as well as allowing collaborations between several subjects in high school.

When we speak of historical events, we do so with a certain amount of perceived knowledge; that is, we come to believe we know specific, individual 'truths' about the event. Since historical works are never unembellished lists of documented facts, the knowledge of how we conceive of factual events, how we document events we did not witness, is important in understanding the resulting storytelling process, not just in fictional literary constructs such as novels, short stories, poetry or film, but in the formulation of history itself. For written history must be seen, at least in part, as a constructed or representational reality and this construction generally takes place organically, that is, there are no architects of such histories. Instead, they come together as a result of public acceptance of the individual elements of the narrative. Over time, historical data and anecdotal narrative solidify into a cohesive whole made up of both hard fact and individual response to those facts, a blended whole that can be termed the master narrative of the historical event and which serves as the basis on which we construct the fictional narratives of literature and film.

The Grimm Brothers’ Little Briar-Rose is a beloved fairytale, which is more commonly known as Sleeping Beauty. What began as a Volksmärchen, is now a world famous and beloved Kunstmärchen. The Brothers collected and adapted the tale, incorporating their own literary style, helping to develop a literary Germanic cultural history. In this thesis I analyze how the tale evolves from the original oral tale to the literary story, and how various perspectives of culture and authors, with particular audiences in mind, adapt their versions. Historical background of the Grimms and their influences, an analysis of how the story was revised by the Grimms in the 1812 and 1857 editions, how American children’s versions compare to the Grimms’ version and how Jane Yolen’s version of Sleeping Beauty meets the structural and cultural expectations of the Grimms’ tale are examined.