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

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 26, 2005, at 6:24 PM, jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

>>> "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
>
>
Perhaps I haven't paid enough attention to know what the dispute is  
about but everyone knows, don't they, that the labor camps were part  
of the Final Solution too. It was just that they had a double  
purpose. Manpower was in short supply. After '42 the same roundups of  
Jews provided victims for the labor camps  as for the death camps.   
The scheme was that able bodied men went one way;  children, pregnant  
women, the infirm went the other. No one was meant to survive for  
very long.