Chance encounter

Is it possible to write a great opera, or a great work of art of any kind, about Auschwitz? One thing is clear: it would have to be truly great. The very idea of a fairly good work, or for that matter a fairly bad one, with such a subject is absurd. And not only absurd, but also revolting. Take Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader, which was published to much acclaim 14 years ago, but which was soon seen to be a meretricious concoction by discerning readers, just on account of its attempting to illuminate the Holocaust by relating it to subsequent events and ‘relationships’.

The most moving and powerful writing on the subject is Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, and that is factual and baldly so. It is understandable that those who endured the Holocaust and survived should spend the rest of their lives remembering it and insisting that no one forget that it happened.