Undoubtedly the historical settings and aspects of the Nazi Holocaust have been examined for many decades. Research has focused much on the victims of the Holocaust. However, the examination of the perpetrators of the Nazi Holocaust continues to cause anxiety and controversy. In my thesis I examine what possible constraints are imposed on authors/narrators and also readers by the sensitive and explosive subject of the representation of Holocaust perpetrators. I compare four texts of German Väterliteratur with Jonathan Littell’s “The Kindly Ones” to examine the questions of aesthetics and ethics in the literary representation of Holocaust perpetrators, and if we can deduce their motives and motivations from these representations. The examination of these Holocaust perpetrator representations is an important contribution to our understanding of the past as well as a contribution to the formation of public cultural memory and identity. All of the examined narratives form part of a continuously growing body of literary expressions of the Holocaust perpetrator and highlight a distinct obligation to the history they narrate – be it fictional or real. My research includes a comparative literary analysis of authentic narratives featuring fictional perpetrators in order to find meaning in these representations that enable the reader to form not only a connection with a dark part of the German past but also with post-war and post-unification debates on the representation of the Holocaust. It also demonstrates a recognition that Holocaust perpetrators are as multifaceted and multidimensional as the narratives they occupy. My thesis is not an exhaustive compilation but rather forms a small sample discussion that enables the reader to emphasise the Holocaust perpetrator. The narratives representing Holocaust perpetrators in contemporary literature serve to transmit history into the future as part of public and personal memory discourse, and the remembrance of history.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanties, English Literature, 2013 / This dissertation functions as an exploration of German author Bernhard Schlink’s engagement with the genre of Vӓterliteratur (Literature about Fathers). By examining how Schlink has used adaptations of this genre in his novels The Reader (1998), Homecoming (2009) and short story Girl with Lizard (2002), this project will attempt to ascertain the extent to which one can view these texts as part of a new wave of father writing that has emerged in the German post-unification space. The question dominating this research project and contained in the first part of the title: “How do I speak about the Past”, implies that part of this research will examine Schlink’s portrayal of the second-generation’s attempt to understand and give voice to their experiences in postwar Germany. As such, my work engages with the emergence of Vӓterliteratur as being the result of an incomplete attempt by second-generation Germans to confront Germany’s national traumatic past during the 1968 Student Movement. However, while Schlink’s work demonstrates a familiarity with the content, structure and themes present in the first wave of Vӓterliteratur he appears to rewrite these into a fictionalised format, demonstrating the continued need in German society to work through the past. In many respects the texts selected for analysis in this dissertation deviate from the traditional conventions found within the earlier father novels, and interestingly appear to emphasise the previously marginalised role of women both during and postwar. What I will demonstrate is that while Schlink’s work makes use of the conventions found in Vӓterliteratur, and by doing so explores the postwar relationships between fathers and sons, it also indirectly engages with the experiences of German women and their own perpetration of, or suffering as a result of the patriarchal attitudes present in, Nazism. Through this dual portrayal (the presence of both men and women) Schlink gives a new perspective to the complexities of German postwar life as seen through the eyes of the second-generation.