"The Evacuation still proceeds..." GR Part 1 Section 1

[jbor at bigpond.com]

>> "Yes, the absence of literal references to or descriptions of the 
>> death camps and the Holocaust is one of the most striking things 
>> about GR."
>
On 27/10/2005, at 3:42 AM, Dustin Iler wrote:

> I've read this on the list before, and I've also read what I'm about 
> to point out on the list before:
>
> One of the most striking aspects of GR is all the time spent in the 
> Mittelwork in the Harz mountains, and the concentration camp Dora. As 
> far as the Holocaust goes, I think that a large amount of the text 
> does deal with the Holocaust. Though I do see where you're going that 
> the narrator(s) don't explicitly tell us (take us) to any of the Death 
> Camps, such as Auschwitz or Treblinka.

Precisely. Dora was not a death camp, it was a labour camp, and of 
course the scenes there are prominent, and the use of slave labour in 
the German weapons program is a central theme (and is possibly even 
symbolised in the "screaming" that comes across the sky in Pirate's 
dream at the opening of the novel.) But what's striking is that there's 
only one very brief mention of Auschwitz ("Auschwitz or Buchenwald" on 
p. 666) in the entire novel, and throughout there are just these veiled 
hints and intimations that a program of systematic genocide against the 
Jewish people was being carried out in Nazi Germany -- no newspaper 
headlines (like the one about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima), 
no radio reports, no references in conversation between characters or 
in the narration. The closest we get is the mention of the "three 
Jewish families sent east" as a result of Katje's undercover work for 
the Dutch Resistance (97, 105) or the little German girl Slothrop runs 
into after the liberation of Dora whose doll has human hair. 
Insinuations. It's happening, but it's happening offstage, and that's 
the effect Pynchon was aiming for. And I think it's pretty close to 
what the history books and those who are still here tell us about that 
time too. The way the opening dream sequence evokes the death camp 
transports is consistent, both with Pirate's special "talent" and with 
Pynchon's decision not to represent the Shoah directly in his novel.

I'm not interested in playing semantic games with the term "Holocaust", 
and yes, it has been discussed before. Here's hoping it doesn't 
degenerate into an excuse for slander and libel this time around as it 
did back then.

best