Novels After The Holocaust

Excellent Books about the Holocaust Aftermath

Feb 16, 2007 TK Kenyon

The Holocaust changed the world and damaged its survivors. Fiction explores the human question, and the best stories about Holocaust survival stay with us.

Most people, with certain dense exceptions, know the rudimentary facts about the Holocaust. Around or at least six million Jews were murdered. Germany’s genocidal tactics killed over a hundred million people in total, by death camp, by starvation, by privation, and by bullet. Survivors were physically and emotionally devastated. Fiction about the Holocaust, its aftermath, and survival after it can tell us far more than mere facts, stats, and maps.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

This excellent, prize-winning short novel was an Oprah’s Book Club pick a couple years ago. It’s light. The prose is spare. There’s nothing lush about this book, but there isn’t meant to be.

Synopsis: When teenager Michael Berg falls ill with hepatitis on his way home from school in 1950s Germany, he is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time, she sleeps with him. She is passionate in bed, but she’s also secretive, and in an odd way. Then she disappears. When Michael next sees her, he’s a law student, and she’s on trial. She refuses to defend herself against the allegations of Holocaust atrocities, and Michael realizes that she’s hiding a far deeper, more personal secret that she considers more shameful than mass murder.

This book, while an interesting account of the aftermath of the Holocaust for young Germans, also has the added dimension of the “love affair” between fifteen year old Michael and thirty year old Hanna. Nowadays, we’d call this molestation and her, a child molester and a pedophile. Nowadays, a character like Hanna might have been trolling the internet instead of picking up youths on their way home from school.

While lesser books may have glossed over this molestation, Michael is damaged by the interaction, and his future relationships suffer. The author equates the heartlessness of Hanna’s molestation of the boy with the way that she, like many other Germans, turned aside from the suffering that she saw during the war. It is this coldness of heart, this soullessness, that damages other people, physically in the case of the Holocaust, and emotionally, in the case of the central character. My novel, RABID, which will be published in April, 2007, also deals with the aftermath of abuse, though my book deals with the Catholic sex abuse crisis.

Highly Recommended.

Gabriel Allon Series by Daniel Silva

The “Holocaust Trilogy” within Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series traces the story of Gabriel, an intelligence agent for Israel’s Mossad and the only child of two Holocaust survivors. Gabriel can be considered a survivor, once removed.

Gabriel Allon is the best assassin in the Mossad. He’s one of those characters that just fascinate you. Read more about fascinating characters here. Read more about fiction writing in general here.

While many books have dealt with the suffering of survivors of the Holocaust, few books have ventured to discuss the pain inflicted on the next generation, raised by people too badly scarred emotionally to normally parent children, but who tried their best nevertheless. The act of bringing a child into this vale of tears is an act of hope and optimism, a physical confirmation that the world is worth another human life, but many Holocaust survivors weren't able to fully participate in loving their children as much as they would have, given other circumstances. When one sees such devastation of humanity, it is impossible to cling too closely to one particular soul that might be snuffed out by the machinations of world powers. By exploring the aftermath of the Holocaust on a familial level, we gain new understanding of Gabriel, and we begin to understand how such a talented artist has the soul of killer.

Chronological Order:

  1. The Kill Artist
  2. The English Assassin (Holocaust Trilogy 1)
  3. The Confessor (Holocaust Trilogy 2. Read more about The Confessor in this article.)
  4. Death in Venice (Holocaust Trilogy 3)
  5. Prince of Fire
  6. The Messenger

These excellent books explore character more than most literary fiction, on par with John Le Carre’s deeply character-driven spy novels. All Daniel Silva's books are excellent.

Highly Recommended.

The copyright of the article Novels After The Holocaust in American Fiction is owned by TK Kenyon. Permission to republish Novels After The Holocaust in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.