Jonathan Littell’s novel The Kindly Ones places literature in a very unusual position ‒ that of a witness to the truth. The unexpected status of literature turns out to be justified because neither the victims nor the executioners can describe the terrible events of the Holocaust during World War II. The victims are subjected to the extermination, the executioners try to conceal their guilt. Then we need a third point of view – that of the fictional narrative. Because the executioners survive, unlike the victims, Littell’s novel sets out to present the Holocaust from their perspective. However, to what extent can we trust the main character, the Nazi officer Maximilian Aue? Does his seemingly objective narrative in fact not leads us towards belittling of the events he describes?
Maurice N. Fadel (Sun,) studied this question.