Literature of Genocide

[Il Penseroso]

I will be student teaching in the spring and one of my placements is with a high school teacher who does a senior-level elective history course on Genocide. The class is structured around meaningful discussions (no textbook is used) and student presentations. I was hoping to find a few short stories or poems, appropriate for 17-18-year-olds that could be used to prompt historical inquiry around the subject of Genocide.

Do you have any suggestions? The Holocaust is a predominant subject; however, the class also has units on American Indians, Armenia, Rwanda, Sanking, and Cambodia.

Thanks for your help.

[Night_Lamp]

In my children's lit. class this year, we read The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas, try that for a different view on the subject.

[Jozanny]

Pen, I cannot remember The Last of the Mohicans very well. It is on my reread list, and in the face of modern frontier authors like McCarthy, maybe too stylized for college track seniors, I dunno, but it was the first novel I read as a teen that made me feel bad for the loss of native American culture.

I think, however, that Conrad's HoD applies here, at least indirectly, not that I want to start another pc argument about this novel, but it does take on "the horror" of modern racial oppression which clashed with the slow rise of progressive opposition in the late 19th century, at least in terms of being a literary text not marred by social reformist sentiment.

I forgot Styron and Sophie's Choice, which I think truly operates as a literary work which effectively takes on the horror of the Holocaust without getting overwhelmed by it. If I handled it as a highschool reader I think other students could as well.

[stlukesguild]

Check into Paul Celan's Death Fugue:

http://www.english.txstate.edu/cohen_p/postmodern/Literature/Celan/Hamburger.html

Other suggestions:

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
by Tadeusz Borowski

This collection of a dozen tales conveys a range of messages about the Holocaust. The title story is about the dehumanization of concentration camp prisoners as they are forced by the Nazis to work to the brink of exhaustion. Those few who are not designated for gassing must carry the corpses to the burning piles. Captive laborers rummage through the pockets of the dead and search for bits of decaying food. Yet all of these savage acts are treated matter-of-factly: even the most beastly behavior on the part of the inmates must be excused, for all is done in the name of survival under the most terrible of circumstances. Other stories tell of a typical day in the life of a prisoner; another is an account of a German soldier killed for his cruelty by a naked woman who tricked him out of his pistol. The soldier dies unable to comprehend the desperate woman's act of vengeance. Recommended for junior high and high school students.

Night
by Elie Wiesel

This highly regarded novel tells of Wiesel's teenage experiences at various Nazi camps. At Auschwitz, Elie and his father were separated forever from his mother and sister. Young Elie struggled to maintain his religious faith in the face of Nazi brutality. He finally despairs of both God and humanity, yet juxtaposed against the atrocities is the story of his enduring relationship with his father. This emotional, imaginative, and thought-provoking memoir deals with the issues of survival, loss, death, and faith. It is recommended for high school students.

Survival in Auschwitz
by Primo Levi

Primo Levi was a young Italian chemist, only twenty-four, when he was captured by the Nazis in 1943. He spent two long and torturous years at Auschwitz before the Russian army freed the remaining prisoners. Levi was allowed to live only because of his superior scientific knowledge which made him useful to the Nazis. This memoir, a classic of twentieth-century literature, tells of his time there, and of the horrors he both experienced and witnessed. Levi's style is uncomplicated and frank, yet sophisticated. At times his tone is almost detached. Both his words and his silences will move and grip the reader as he relates the evils of this notorious death camp. Recommended for high school students.

taken from: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/lit.htm

You might also look at the poems of Osip Mandelstam... especially the "Stalin Epigram" and the poems of Anna Akhmatova, especially Requiem. Other authors you might look at include Czesław Miłosz, Solzhenitsyn, André Malraux, etc...

[Il Penseroso]

Unfortunately, due to my position as student teacher, I won't have much ability to get full books added to the curriculum (It's also a relatively poor school). I would like to find poems or short stories (the shorter the better) I can make in printouts of for reading in class. Also, because this is a history course, direct ties to the material are essential.

I do appreciate all suggestions though, and if I am ever given the opportunity to teach something like this in my own classroom, I hope to include something more substantial (I would really like to do a "literature of genocide" English class). Night was required reading during my sophomore year (English class) and there are some fantastic things that can be done with the novel.

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas looks interesting, though I don't believe it would be the right tone for this class (it seems best suited to young readers) and I think something with a stronger historical base would work better.

Thanks for the suggestions. The Paul Celan poem in particular is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for; thanks stlukes (for the other link as well).

Also, I have Hilda Schiff's anthology of Holocaust Poetry on order from Amazon.

[lavendar1]

I know you've said you probably can't add new book-length texts to the curriculum at the school where you'll be teaching, but I can't resist recommending a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman called Maus. You can check it out here:

http://www.amazon.com/Maus-Survivors-Father-History-Troubles/dp/0679748407

For more info on Spiegelman, look here:

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/spiegelman_art.html

He won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, and in the process started a trend toward respectability for the graphic novel. I must say I've never read anything quite like it. And I'm sure your students would both love the form and learn much from the content.

[JBI]

The theoretical work of Shoshana Felman is generally held in high regard - supposedly if you teach too much trauma literature around horrendous events, students begin showing symptoms of undergoing these events - just some food for thought. Of course, when she saw the signs, rather than stop them, she just recorded them, being a professor.

[applepie]

It's a pretty short book (I don't know if you'll be able to get it added), but you may want to try a novel called Night by Elie Wiesel

[Il Penseroso]

The theoretical work of Shoshana Felman is generally held in high regard - supposedly if you teach too much trauma literature around horrendous events, students begin showing symptoms of undergoing these events - just some food for thought. Of course, when she saw the signs, rather than stop them, she just recorded them, being a professor.

I'll definitely check this out. I don't know if the teacher already does this or not, but I've also read an article about how it is beneficial to teach how societies that have participated in or were victimized by genocide attempt to resolve issues after such events as the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda.

Thanks for referring me.

[JBI]

I'll definitely check this out. I don't know if the teacher already does this or not, but I've also read an article about how it is beneficial to teach how societies that have participated in or were victimized by genocide attempt to resolve issues after such events as the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda.

Thanks for referring me.

It's not that - something like Night, or If This is Man deal with very real experience, and the way it is conveyed sort of becomes absorbed into readers - reading allows for empathy, but when empathy is taken in too large doses, Felman and others' work has shown it can lead to symptoms of trauma and stuff.

The reason why history textbooks don't do that is because they aren't presenting experience, merely constructed accounts. As such there is a thick wall between experience, history, and medium.

[Il Penseroso]

It's not that - something like Night, or If This is Man deal with very real experience, and the way it is conveyed sort of becomes absorbed into readers - reading allows for empathy, but when empathy is taken in too large doses, Felman and others' work has shown it can lead to symptoms of trauma and stuff.

The reason why history textbooks don't do that is because they aren't presenting experience, merely constructed accounts. As such there is a thick wall between experience, history, and medium.

I get that, and the ideas are particularly relevant for how I'd like to teach subjects of great emotional weight in a history curriculum, by utilizing literature. However, I was throwing out another idea that I've read about recently for teaching about genocide that can help student not become overburdened by such grave subjects. An attempt at positivity can be made by teaching about how communities cope with the after effects of something like what happened in Rwanda, for instance.

[Il Penseroso]

Edit:
Rather than "positivity" I mean an attempt to alleviate symptoms of apathy that can be generated in classrooms that focus on atrocities by considering debates over how governments or international communities have sought justice following such events.

[blp]

As I said on your page, Sven Lindqvist. His book Exterminate all the Brutes is about atrocities and holocausts in Africa under colonialism. It's very short and you could probably pull out some key passages. As the title suggests, he relates his argument very closely to Heart of Darkness, so you could use passages from that alongside. The word 'brutes', often used to mean simply 'animals', itself was a key plank of the rhetoric people used to justify colonial atrocities, often on a huge scale.

Churchill was still using similar language in the thirties to justify kicking the Palestinians off their land. Can't find the quote right now, but there's a famous one about not seeing the problem with kicking out an inferior race to make way for a superior one. Pretty sure he draws an equivalence between this and what happened to the American Indians. There's another where he says that, yes, the land being used to create the state of Israel already had people there, but they had about as much right to it as a dog found lying in a manger.

[JBI]

Hmm, I wonder if somebody could tell me a definitive work -whether historical, or fictional, or non-fictional about American campaigns against native Americans - preferably recent, as traditional historiography seems to kind of gloss it over as "the great expansion Westward" or something of the sort.

[Il Penseroso]

Thanks blp

JBI, have you read anything by James Welch? I don't know about "definitive" but his fiction is good for bringing up the experiences of Native Americans, both around contemporary issues in Montana (Winter in the Blood) and the history behind breaches of treaties and conflict as the Westward movement brought greater numbers of settlers into Montana (Fools Crow).

I would like to find some shorter works that have some of these same goals.

[Jozanny]

JBI, I hate to turn to filmography, but I think Little Big Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_Man) and Dances With Wolves are the most radically revisionist in terms of giving "the Nations" the most sympathetic treatment in terms of expansion into the mid-west and the Western frontier. I have mixed feelings about all this, and nearly got flayed alive some years ago on a community called Spiral-Bound for objecting to the use of the term genocide in relation to the European conquest of the Americas, for this very long and slow defeat started, as far as I am concerned, in South America, worked its way up over a few hundred years, and exhausted itself by the 1900's.

Liberals do not like to be reminded that certain Nations were as brutal with captives as white America was with them, though I grant that by a certain point in time white reactionism was excessive and behaved little or no better than other exterminators in history.

I do not know, however, of any comprehensive work, and I will make a note of this.

[JBI]

JBI, I hate to turn to filmography, but I think Little Big Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_Man) and Dances With Wolves are the most radically revisionist in terms of giving "the Nations" the most sympathetic treatment in terms of expansion into the mid-west and the Western frontier. I have mixed feelings about all this, and nearly got flayed alive some years ago on a community called Spiral-Bound for objecting to the use of the term genocide in relation to the European conquest of the Americas, for this very long and slow defeat started, as far as I am concerned, in South America, worked its way up over a few hundred years, and exhausted itself by the 1900's.

Liberals do not like to be reminded that certain Nations were as brutal with captives as white America was with them, though I grant that by a certain point in time white reactionism was excessive and behaved little or no better than other exterminators in history.

I do not know, however, of any comprehensive work, and I will make a note of this.

I can vouch that in Canada treatment was clearly near-genocidal when it was carried out, though that was more "accidental" in the sense that they just happened to give every Native Born child to the trusting care of Jesus Christ, and his faithful Catholic and Anglican Priests - of the half that didn't die, the bulk ended up sexually abused and living in terrible conditions.

In terms of expansion, from what I understand on formation of the US, the country was little more than New England and some space around it - if I recall correctly much scholarship is and has been done, and it has been suggested that millions of Natives were wiped out on the expansion Westward, which would make sense - the media seems to suggest that to, as literature and 20th century cinema seems to feature intense native killing sprees.

The question though comes in, from my understanding, of whether a) this was planned, b) was administered by government policy, and c) was caused by war, decease, sanctioned massacre, or other events, and d) to what scale, given the clouded information on the subject.

I would think it probably a genocide, in fact, I think I would probably criticize you for suggesting it isn't just because the Spaniards took a longer time massacring Latin America - the accounts of 16th century colonial administrators in Mexico suggest a brutal regime - I believe Erasmus, in his Adage "War Is Sweet For Those Who Don't Know It" makes explicit reference to a sort of mass depopulation of Mexico proper, based on accounts by a Spanish missionary/humanist stationed there.

Who knows though - for instance, do we consider Roman expansion with the same gaze? The Bible itself suggests and records the complete genocide of Amalech, for instance, and how do we read that?

[Il Penseroso]

The question though comes in, from my understanding, of whether a) this was planned, b) was administered by government policy, and c) was caused by war, decease, sanctioned massacre, or other events, and d) to what scale, given the clouded information on the subject.

I would think it probably a genocide, in fact, I think I would probably criticize you for suggesting it isn't just because the Spaniards took a longer time massacring Latin America - the accounts of 16th century colonial administrators in Mexico suggest a brutal regime - I believe Erasmus, in his Adage "War Is Sweet For Those Who Don't Know It" makes explicit reference to a sort of mass depopulation of Mexico proper, based on accounts by a Spanish missionary/humanist stationed there.

Who knows though - for instance, do we consider Roman expansion with the same gaze? The Bible itself suggests and records the complete genocide of Amalech, for instance, and how do we read that?

I think it is particularly important to teach the subject not as an "aberration of modern history" (as it sometimes is), but rather as something more deeply fundamental to human attempts at civilization.

A good (absolutely horrifying) reference for the brutality of Spanish colonization of the New World is Las Casas' The Destruction of the Indies.

I think the treatment of Native Americans is generally taught, and viewed in accordanc with the UN's definition, as questionably genocide. It largely breaks down to, in official discourse today, as JBI mentioned, whether or not the devastation was purposeful or not, and systematically government-sanctioned. Inherent in the spreading American culture was a belief in the "disappearing Indian," that given time and proper "education," native culture (and biological traits) would be eliminated, and a solution would naturally occur. However, there are many instances (particularly aroud the latter stages of the 1800s- following the Civil War - as well as the earlier Indian Wars, before American Independence), in which national militaries were utilized for attempts at wholesale slaughter. I think, in this case, however, that the genocidal tendencis were more manifestations of the culture than government-willed.

[OrphanPip]

I also take offense to you putting "nation" in quotation marks. Are you implying that natives are somehow not organized into nations? A nation is a group of people with a common history, language, and culture. I don't see how natives don't have a right to call themselves nations.

Some like to ignore that much killing was done well after the "civilization" of natives. See residential schools and the "trail of tears" incidents. The Cherokee were pretty much Christianized when they were forced on a death march out of Georgia to "Indian Land" in Oklahoma.

[JBI]

I also take offense to you putting "nation" in quotation marks. Are you implying that natives are somehow not organized into nations? A nation is a group of people with a common history, language, and culture. I don't see how natives don't have a right to call themselves nations.

Some like to ignore that much killing was done well after the "civilization" of natives. See residential schools and the "trail of tears" incidents. The Cherokee were pretty much Christianized when they were forced on a death march out of Georgia to "Indian Land" in Oklahoma.

I would imply historically they weren't. The concept of nation first emerged, according to Anderson, who I tend to believe, amongst Creole people's in Spanish Latin America, and seems to have spread to Europe from there - the concept of nation, as defined by Anderson, is something that is sovereign, and limited, and as such, "nation" seems a bad word to describe anything before that. A sort of group mentality was perhaps there, but a sort of "nationalism"?

I think that was a particular problem when it came to policy - the national model didn't spread evenly - a geographic space all of a sudden was transformed into Indochina, which later was transformed into nations with borders that didn't exist before - for peoples who hunt, or move freely within borders, a sense of nation perhaps doesn't exist - one needs to have an acknowledgment of a sense of what is nation, where is nation, who belongs to it, and what makes it so. As such, I would think the US has a clearer definition of nation than Canada, where the answer is essentially "We are Canadian because we aren't American." What it means to a nation and the whole notion of nation is a rather new invention. I would argue that the US got the idea before Native Americans were able to, or at least defined themselves, because of guns, a lot faster.

[blp]

This is a huge and significant subject and you've made me want to look into it further. I had a row about it with a right wing guy here a few years ago and he quoted Buckminster Fuller at me to the effect that the kind of mass murderous buccaneering represented by colonialism was essential to the spread of civilisation - a contradictory, racist and, I would say, provably wrong argument. In a lot of ways, the process it justifies, of building civilisation on barbarousness, continues unabated. It won't be directly relevant to what you're doing, but Slavoj Zizek's recent book Violence touches on this. Come to think of it, he quotes a Brecht poem in full that might just be useful to you, though, again, it's not precisely about the subject you're looking into:

Step forward: we hear
That you are a good man.

You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.

You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?

You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?

You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?

You do not consider your personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?

You are a good friend.
Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration
of your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

Also somewhat tangential to the main issue, but, if you can get hold of it, I strongly recommend you check out a book called I Won't Learn From You by Herbert Kohl. Ah, wait, turns out it's only hard to get hold of over here. Over there you can buy it easily (http://www.amazon.com/Wont-Learn-You-Thoughts-Maladjustment/dp/1565840968/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261169903&sr=1-1). It's about radical solutions to educational failures in general, but an awful lot of it is about race in particular. At one point Kohl describes being brought in to observe a class in Texas that was having discipline problems. The students were mainly Hispanic and, in the first class Kohl attended, the teacher opened a history book and read, 'The first people in Texas came from Virginia.' A student at the back said, 'What are we? Animals?' and the teacher got up and walked out.

[blp]

The Bible itself suggests and records the complete genocide of Amalech, for instance, and how do we read that?

As just another episode in the nightmare of history from which we are trying to awake?

[OrphanPip]

I would imply historically they weren't. The concept of nation first emerged, according to Anderson, who I tend to believe, amongst Creole people's in Spanish Latin America, and seems to have spread to Europe from there - the concept of nation, as defined by Anderson, is something that is sovereign, and limited, and as such, "nation" seems a bad word to describe anything before that. A sort of group mentality was perhaps there, but a sort of "nationalism"?

I think that was a particular problem when it came to policy - the national model didn't spread evenly - a geographic space all of a sudden was transformed into Indochina, which later was transformed into nations with borders that didn't exist before - for peoples who hunt, or move freely within borders, a sense of nation perhaps doesn't exist - one needs to have an acknowledgment of a sense of what is nation, where is nation, who belongs to it, and what makes it so. As such, I would think the US has a clearer definition of nation than Canada, where the answer is essentially "We are Canadian because we aren't American." What it means to a nation and the whole notion of nation is a rather new invention. I would argue that the US got the idea before Native Americans were able to, or at least defined themselves, because of guns, a lot faster.

I think that definition of nationhood is Eurocentric and comes out of the bias created by the prevalence of nation-states in Europe. Native groups shared languages, religions, tribal bonds, and common history. The only thing they lacked was a European concept of statehood. Moreover, we have natives declaring themselves a nation in the early 19th century while their persecution was still ongoing. Geographical sovereignty of a group of people is not necessary for nationhood.

[Paulclem]

Hmm, I wonder if somebody could tell me a definitive work -whether historical, or fictional, or non-fictional about American campaigns against native Americans - preferably recent, as traditional historiography seems to kind of gloss it over as "the great expansion Westward" or something of the sort.

Hi JBI - just caught this thread a bit late. A book that was recommended to me about this was:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the Amercan west

by Dee brown.

I haven't read it yet, so I can't comment on it though.

[Dinkleberry2010]

The two best books I've read on the Native Americans are Hanta Yo and Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

Hanta Yo is an epic--it's over a thousand pages, and it describes and covers the daily life of three or four generations of a certain band of the Lakota, and its iinitial contact with whites--and the U.S. federal government.

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee is a general history of the Native Americans in the period 1860-1890.

[Il Penseroso]

Alright, maybe to refocus this I'd like to remind everyone that I'm looking for teachable literature to spark discussion in a high school class, without the ability to get whole books added to the curriculum.

I don't mind outside discussion, or recommendations of good literature that may not be teachable but will help me develop my own knowledge base around the subject, but I would also like to get my more specific request met as closely as possible. I've accumulated a few good poems from suggestions thus far (though I would also like more), but I also would like some suggestions for a good short story or two.

Thanks for the suggestions thus far.

[FalseReality]

Tadeusz Borowski also wrote poetry about the Holocaust, if you are specifically looking for that.

[OrphanPip]

The use of holocaust imagery by non-jews, like Sylvia Plath, is a good topic for discussion in a classroom. Some Jewish scholars took great offense at Plath's poetry, while others embraced it. It's a ripe topic and Plath's "Daddy" is pretty accessible to high school students.

[JBI]

I think that definition of nationhood is Eurocentric and comes out of the bias created by the prevalence of nation-states in Europe. Native groups shared languages, religions, tribal bonds, and common history. The only thing they lacked was a European concept of statehood. Moreover, we have natives declaring themselves a nation in the early 19th century while their persecution was still ongoing. Geographical sovereignty of a group of people is not necessary for nationhood.

The concept of Nation emerged out of Creole's to begin with. It was the failure of Spanish rule, and the breaking up of Latin America in the first place that created the concept of nation - I don't understand exactly what you are trying to say - that it is a European imposition - maybe on some scale, but the idea itself isn't European to begin with.

[OrphanPip]

The concept of Nation emerged out of Creole's to begin with. It was the failure of Spanish rule, and the breaking up of Latin America in the first place that created the concept of nation - I don't understand exactly what you are trying to say - that it is a European imposition - maybe on some scale, but the idea itself isn't European to begin with.

I'm not familiar with Anderson's work, but the basis of nationhood has been around in Europe for centuries. From what I was able to look up all I can find is that he argues nations are socially constructed, which is fine, but I can't find anything on it arising out of Creole culture. The word nation was used by the Romans to refer to people of different "races". The Roman use is not identical to the modern use, but is clearly related.

Anyway, my objection wasn't to whether or not the idea came from the Creole. We value the definition of the nation as nation-state because this is the standard of the Western world. However, territorial claims and statehood are not necessary for nationhood to exist. A cohesive group tied by cultural traditions, like the Cherokee, is not less of a nation simply because it lacks military strength and lines drawn on a map.

[Il Penseroso]

Has anybody read Berel Lang's Holocaust Representation: Art within the Limits of History and Ethics? Apparently he has argued that imaginative representations of the Holocaust are detrimental toward understanding its gravity - though in this one he changes his stance a bit. His premise is basically against how I'd like to teach the subject, but I think it would be beneficial to bring up with the students (seniors).

[Jozanny]

Sorry to say I have not read it, but I am not sure I would agree with Lang. I do not think our minds are equipped to handle graphic horror very well, and making aesthetic choices about how that horror gets represented may be a human necessity.

Most of my historic understanding of the Holocaust comes through film, then disability literature (the Germans killed the disabled in the camps too) and then periodicals like TNR.

I don't read much on it and don't want to, as I am depressed and melancholy and sad enough, and I cannot dwell on issues like Rwanda without feeling a negative impact, but I do feel encouraged that classes like this are being offered at the high school level. It is good to see this get tackled--but it also makes me worry about whether or not progressive exposure creates its own tyranny, but that is beyond the scope of your needs.

If I can think of any of my poet friends-- actually, I have published Holocaust poetry, now that I think about it, but I am, of course, still an emerging author as opposed to a firmly established one.

I wish you all success with the course Il Penseroso.

[blp]

The penultimate chapter of DM Thomas' The White Hotel is a description of a WWII massacre of Jews in the Ukraine. Could probably stand alone.

You might want to work in Adorno's statement that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. Sits interestingly alongside Death Fugue.

Can't resist posting this, from today's Guardian, on the climate talks:



Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chair of the G77 group of 130 poor countries, compared the proposed deal to the holocaust.

"[This] is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries. It's a solution based on values that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces."

Di-Aping's comments triggered immediate protests and calls to withdraw his remarks. Sweden called them "absolutely despicable" and Ed Miliband condemned what he called the "disgusting comparison" which he said "should offend people across this conference whatever background they come from".

In the final plenary session a Venezuelan delegate cut her palm and asked if she had to bleed to have her points heard. "You are witnessing a coup d'etat against the UN," she said.