BtZ42 this section

[Joseph Tracy]

I think Elie Wiesel’s writing gives a powerful sense of why the ovens became the dominant language. Jews were killed in several ways: frequently shot, machine gunned into mass graves, bayoneted,  starved, worked to death, cold exposure, ‘scientific’ experiments , and after the mass killing was already underway Jewish people were murdered via the inexpensive unbloody efficiency of gas chambers. But the numbers killed required mass disposal of bodies and cremation was the industrial solution. The fires are what survivors remember most vividly.  It stank; It turned people into ash, made them disappear without trace, or place.  It was the final step in a methodical attempt at global genocide, the erasure of a people. 
Another similarity in this chapter in GR to the events of the Holocaust is the difference between Gottfried and Katje. Many Jewish people saw or were warned about what was coming, many fled but many were in denial, refusing to see what was happening and even cooperating with the deportation of other Jews. 

At any rate, and by whatever mechanism or reason, the language of ovens is so common that some who have not looked at the details of the  holocaust think most  victims were burned alive. This did happen occasionally but was uncommon.  

For Pynchon it also carries forward into the threat of  Nuclear fire  enabled by burning rocket fuel ( or bomber fuel), which is where the arc of the story is going.




> On Jun 19, 2016, at 1:16 PM, Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Why ovens became a metaphor for the Holocaust perplexes me since most were already dead before they were placed in them (at least in the death camps)
> Misappropriation of the word that became conventional wisdom over time most likely 
> 
> rich
> 
> 
>> On Jun 19, 2016, at 7:07 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The Oven chapter. And GR is NOT about the Holocaust AT ALL? Don't think that holds up. 
>> How does the Hansel & Gretel Story work as depth metaphor and there are other (is another)
>> Great Northern Myth at work. 
>> 
>> Why a threesome? 
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