in fact puts an end to the possibility of understanding how so many people agreed to participate in the genocide committed at Auschwitz.
In addition to this one-dimensional, comprehensive picture of the SS crew, the figure of a good SS man appears. It is perhaps a crystal unit from beginning to end, which entered the service in Auschwitz against its own will (as in the books Angel of Auschwitz and The Secret of Auschwitz), or one which, under the influence of love, undergoes a kind of metamorphosis (e.g. Black and Purple), or struggles with its conscience (as in Kommando puff, and partly also in Auschwitz Lullaby). The interest and emotions of the reader are focused on this character, its (moral) suffering, actions, thoughts and decisions. It may lead to a paradoxical situation (which is most clearly shown in the book Angel of Auschwitz), in which the SS-man becomes the beneficiary of attention, care and compassion. The reader starts to cheer on and empathise with the SS man. The victims of the camp assume a secondary role, and their fate seems to be of secondary importance to the moral transformation or struggle of the hero in the SS uniform. It is not only a far-reaching relativisation of the concept of guilt and perpetration with respect to Auschwitz. It is, above all, an insult to the victims of the camp and their memory.
A noticeable phenomenon is the already mentioned gruesomeness of the camp problems, consisting in exaggerating the crimes perpetrated by overstating the number of victims, exaggerating and over-emphasising dramatic individual phenomena as if they were the norm, as well as describing untrue nightmares invented by the author. At the same time, the authors completely ignore the day-to-day problems that make up the daily inhuman experience of the prisoners that lead them to a state of extreme physical and mental exhaustion and, consequently, to slow death. The prisoners portrayed in the novels do not seem to feel permanent hunger, and if they are at all ill, usually suffer from typhus, but not from persistent scabies, avitaminosis, scurvy, boils, diarrhoea. They also do not suffer from ordinary colds, which under the camp conditions turned into life-threatening pneumonia and could end up in death. The loss of freedom, detachment from the family, uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones and longing for home, as well as camp filth, vermin and the omnipresent brutalisation of life are not sources of suffering to them either. These novels lack balance in presenting the torture to which prisoners were subjected; it is difficult to discern in them the daily life of the camp. The authors instead highlight that which is incidental or marginal, convincing the reader that this was everyday life.
Such balancing on the brink of crime drama can have serious negative consequences for the recipient's perception. The point is not only that such an image of Auschwitz is simply not authentic. First and foremost, the dazzling horror makes the reader get used to dealing with extreme macabre, and thus their sensitivity to the fate of the victims is reduced. The contrast between what is contained in the novels and what actually happened may lead to a diminution of the list of genuinely committed crimes and the conclusion that Auschwitz was not as terrible as it could have been. Does poisoning people alive with gas not give the impression of an almost humane act? Does death by shooting appear not to be a mild form of death in the face of the alternative of dogs tearing people apart? Similarly, overstating the number of victims may lead to the belief that there were "few of them" in reality. After all, according to documentation, between September and October 1943, "only" 11,000 Jews were sent directly from the ramp to the gas chambers, not 60,000, as Dempsey states in The Angel of Auschwitz. The desensitisation here is to lead the reader to the conclusion that the historical reality was less terrible than they expected and not as cruel as it could have been.
The last element specific to contemporary popular novels is a kind of trivialisation and turning the problems of Auschwitz into soap-opera. The dramatic history of the camp and the unprecedented crime that took place there becomes only a background for love stories (described in such an idealised way that they seem tacky). The narrative is conducted in such a way as to focus the reader's attention only on the main characters - usually a female prisoner and a male (prisoner or SS-man). The plot of the story is the emotions that appear between them, love, or a dangerous game, lined with fascination and eroticism, in which a woman's life is at stake. The annihilation going on behind their backs, if at all outlined in a way that is noticeable to the reader, only serves as a background. The mass crime that occurs in the background is of no importance as long as it does not become a real threat to the main characters. All that matters is their fate and survival. The subconscious desire for a happy ending that accompanies the reader, which novels constructed in such a way generally aim to achieve, is obscured by the fact that in the face of the Holocaust and the more than one million victims of Auschwitz, there is and cannot be a happy ending.