The World Upside Down: Contributions of
Three Contemporary World War II-era Novels
to Popular Culture
The Holocaust has been officially over for more than sixty-five years.
Post-war, immediate literary approaches to people’s experiences during World
War II were unusual, but not unknown, particularly as they related to the
Holocaust. For example, Anne Frank’s Diary o f a Young Girl (1947), the
quintessential account of two families’ experiences in hiding, reads more like a
novel than a real-life diary. Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz (1947) relates an
immediate account of the tragedy of living in a concentration camp. It is a
memoir so intense that readers have often depersonalized it to a popular novel.
Other relatively early approaches to writing about the Holocaust were
often cloaked by an immediacy that was dark, full of despair, and dissolution of
self, such as the tone and atmosphere of Night, by Hungarian author Elie Wiesel.
First published in Yiddish in 1956 in Argentina, this memoir about a father and
son’s experiences at the German concentration camps at Auschwitz and
Buchenwald has been classified as a novel, autobiography, autobiographical
novel, nonfictional novel, among other hybrid classifications. The variety of
literary classifications about Night illustrates the range of popular literature
about the Holocaust. Night's popularity as a “hybrid” work became evident in
2005 when it was selected for review by Oprah Winfrey’s book club. By 2011,
over six million copies of Night had been sold.
The scope of popular literature about the Holocaust—as compared to
scholarly reports about this critical field of study—encompasses memoirs,
autobiographies, novels, epistolary novels, books for children and young adults,
semi-historical accounts of hero-actors, and updated third-person accounts
which read like novels. The popularity of holocaust literature draws on the
desire for meaning, the reader’s interest in people, times, and places in a pre
social media world, and the desire to be entertained, to leam, and to understand.
Literature becomes popular when it resonates with readers, no matter what its
genre, approach, or style. The mass appeal of these writings leads into the
mainstream of popular culture as the world of the Holocaust is reconfigured into
contemporary experiences.
Now that at least two generations have learned about the atrocities of
the Holocaust, World War II, and Nazi Germany, there has been increased
interest in literary approaches to the horrors and humanity of WWII. Seven of
these popular novels and documentary-style writings that have contributed to the
body of popular literature and popular culture about the Holocaust are as
follows: