This is a list of Discussion board questions that need to be answered in one – two paragraph each. These questions should be answered separately and not related to the next. Describe the reactions of the various inhabitants and visitors to the ‘work’ of the sanitation department. How well does the allegorical elements work to tell the story of the lead up to the Holocaust?
“There is no ‘why’ here.” Why is this so significant to Levi’s work.? Is Levi’s scientific dissection of life in Auschwitz effective in analyzing the concentration/death camp experience? Is creating sophisticated and even ‘great’ works of literature the most effective way of ‘bearing witness’? How does Levi categorize people in the chapter “The Drowned and the Saved”? Why do people ‘drown’? What type of person is ‘saved’?
The story of a woman shooting a Nazi guard as he attempted to rape her is reported by many Auschwitz survivors. How does Borowski turn this into literature in “The Death of Schillinger”? What can be made of Becher in the title story “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman”? Discuss how characters become victim, bystanders and perpetrators? Is the terror Borowski describes (and maybe all of Holocaust literature) the realization that the reader sees herself as victim? Or is the terror related to seeing oneself as a bystander and/or perpetrator?
Does Charlotte Delbo’s work describe a different experience than that in the work of men? How does the mix of poetry and prose help Delbo describe “the inexplicable”? What happens to the survivors “The Measure of our Days.” Is Delbo and her comrades from the camp successful in creating meaning from their Auschwitz experience?
How does Kertesz explain his Jewishness? Kertesz uses quotation marks as a weapon. What is his target? What is meant by “Fatelessness”?
Is Spiegelman’s use of the graphic form effective? What about his use of post-modern self-reflexive analysis? Does Maus excuse Vladek’s behavior?