Fateless is the first
novel by the Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész. Written in 1975 in his
native tongue, the story follows a teenager, George (Gyorgy) Koves, who in 1944
is conscripted to work for the Germans as part of a Jewish forced-labor group,
and then is deported to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz concentration camps. He
is liberated after a year and returns to his native Budapest, where his former
neighbors urge him to put the past behind him. He finally concludes that all
human beings must either surrender to their fate or experience freedom, which he
deems mutually exclusive states.
What distinguishes
Fateless from many other Holocaust narratives is that Kertész treats the
dehumanization of his captivity with ironic detachment, juxtaposing atrocities
with off-hand remarks by the book’s fourteen-year-old protagonist. Reviewers
have described Kertész' literary élan as a successful portrayal of the "banality
of horror."
About the Author
While Fateless is not
entirely autobiographical, its story closely follows a year in the life of the
author. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1929, Kertész was raised in a secular
Jewish family. In 1944, at age fourteen, Kertész was deported to Auschwitz and
then to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in spring, 1945.
After the war, Kertész
worked for a short time as a journalist in Hungary before being forced out by
its Stalinist government. From the late 1940s until 1990, Hungary was ruled by a
series of Communist dictatorships. When elections took place during this period,
voters had the option of selecting the solitary published slate or not voting at
all. These years of totalitarian oppression shaped Kertész' style and voice as a
writer. Not until 1990, when the first open were elections held, did Hungary
align itself with NATO and the European Union.
In addition to writing
fiction, Kertész has authored essays and plays and has translated into Hungarian
several German literary works, including those of Freud, Nietzsche, and
Wittgenstein. In 1995 he was awarded the Brandenburg Literary Prize, and in 2002
he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Background Information
German concentration camp
inmates were identified by cloth badges sewn onto their prison uniforms. In most
cases, these badges took the form of a single inverted triangle, often including
a printed letter that identified the nationality of the prisoner. The badges of
Jewish prisoners were either yellow stars or a pair of triangle patches, one
sewn over the other, to form a star. The color-code for the badges was as
follows:
The camps at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in Oswiecim, Poland, about 150 miles from Budapest,
were among the most notorious of Nazi extermination camps. Buchenwald was
actually many sub-camps located in east-central Germany, about five miles
northwest of Weimar; Zeitz was one of Buchenwald's sub-camps.
The author reveals
nicknames for two groups of Jewish prisoners that were used throughout the camp
universe: "Muslims" and "Finns." The "Muslims" were dying Jews whom George
describes as "ancient old men with their heads buried in their shoulders, with
their noses protruding from their faces." The "Finns" were religious Jews who
were often seen "mumbling their prayers endlessly like a debt that can never be
paid off and rocking rhythmically back and forth" (page 101).
Discussion Topics and
Questions
Uncle Lajos and Uncle Vili
(page 22) represent two opposing Jewish responses to the Holocaust and perhaps
to life in general. How would you characterize them? Which is closest to
George's philosophy?
Anne-Marie's sister says
that "we Jews are different from other people" and that "we carry this otherness
within ourselves" (page 27). What does she mean by this?
How does George come to
realize the death-camp significance of the tattoos and crematoria smoke (pages
78-79)? What are his conclusions? How does this differ from his acceptance,
several pages later (page 83) of life at Auschwitz and his awareness of its
"purpose"?
As George watches prisoners
marching and listens to their screams, he explains, "This is when I found out
that you could be bored--even at Auschwitz--provided you were choosy" (page 87).
What does he mean by this? (He later comments, "Captivity also has its gray,
everyday days, or rather . . . true captivity is really a row of gray everyday
days" [page 99]).
George recalls a piece of
poetry: "Who rides so late through night and wind?" This is the opening passage
of Erlkönig by the great German poet Goethe, which describes a child
tormented by a demon who tempts him with empty promises, in the end killing him
in his father's arms. Of Goethe's many works, why do you think George reflects
on this particular poem?
Kertész uses a variety of
languages and translations to present a sort of tower of Babel (pages 139-172),
by writing about international prisoners in the Buchenwald hospital. How does
this multi-lingual presentation affect the atmosphere of the story?
After returning to
Budapest, George is asked to talk about "the hell of the camps" (page 181). What
is his response? Why was he unable to describe the atrocities? What is George's
understanding of "hell"?
Fateless is filled
with subtle irony. Discuss how the following passages that express Kertész' view
of the Nazi Holocaust:
". . . later everyone would
be given back his belongings, of course. But first disinfecting awaited the
luggage, and a bath awaited us. Indeed, it was high time for that, I thought to
myself" (page 57).
"My mother is waiting for
me. She'll certainly be happy to see me, the poor dear. I recall how once she
planned for me to become an engineer or a doctor or something like that" (page
190).
In an essay published by
the Nobel Foundation, the critic Madeline Gustafsson wrote that Fateless
is "not a difficult read, not in a technical sense. It is a straightforward,
meticulous narrative, without digressions and without comments." She later adds
that it is written in "a terribly provocative tone." What did she mean by these
two observations?
Kertész commented about his
Jewishness in his Nobel lecture: "My grandparents still lit the Sabbath candles
every Friday night, but they changed their name to a Hungarian one, and it was
natural for them to consider Judaism their religion and Hungary their homeland.
My maternal grandparents perished in the Holocaust; my paternal grandparents'
lives were destroyed by Matyas Rakosi's Communist rule. . . I think this brief
family history encapsulates and symbolizes this country's [Hungary] modern-day
travails. What it teaches me, though, is that there is not only bitterness and
grief, but also extraordinary moral potential. Being a Jew to me is once again,
first and foremost, a moral challenge." From your reading of Fateless and
Kertész's statement, what is your understanding of his term "moral challenge"?
In his lecture to the Nobel
Foundation, Kertész said, "If I look back now and size up honestly the situation
I was in at the time, I have to conclude that in the West, in a free society, I
probably would not have been able to write the novel known by readers today as
Fateless." How might his life under various totalitarian communist
regimes have shaped the style of his novel?
Kertész says in the
concluding paragraphs of Fateless, that now that he has returned from the
camps, "Everybody will ask me about the deprivations, the 'terrors of the
camps,' but for me, the happiness there will always be the most memorable
experience, perhaps" (page 191). Does Kertész intend this remark to be ironic?
If so, how effective is it? If not, what does he mean by it?
Further Reading
Kaddish for
a Child Not Born by
Imre Kertész, translated by Katharina M. Wilson and Christpher C. Wilson, Hydra
Books -- Northwestern University Press, 1997.
Other recommended books about World
War II concentration camps include Night, by Elie Weisel (Bantam Books,
1982), and Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi (Touchstone Books, 1995).
For further information about the
Holocaust and the Nazi death camps, see:
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