Auschwitz When He States, "A

Auschwitz When he states, "a novel about Auschwitz is either not a novel or not about Auschwitz," Wiesel refers to the inability of a traditional narrative construct to contain the forms, contexts, and emotions of the Holocaust. It requires non-linear constructions, abstractions, and impressionistic renditions of the events to convey the totality of the events that took place.

Friedlander firmly agrees, adding also the necessity of conveying the Holocaust in universal, global terms rather than falling into particularities as a novel might need to do given the specificity of the novel's narrative concept. In Probing the Limits of Representation, Friedlander states, "we are dealing with an event of a kind which demands a global approach and a general reflection on the difficulties that are raised by its representation," (1). They are, as Friedlander puts it, "abstract issues" that the artist could not convey in the format of a novel (1).

Eli Weisel achieves abstraction with Maus, which offers a narrative that is ironically detached from the novel format, accompanied by impressionistic and expressionistic artwork. Animals provide the global elements that convey the universal horrors of Holocaust. Hansen also comments on the problems with "classical narrative" in that it "relies on neoclassicist principles of compositional unity, motivation, linearity, equilibrium, and closure," none of which are conceivable within the Holocaust framework (131). From this anti-novel, anti-classical point-of-view, Schindler's List becomes especially problematic, especially regarding the "compulsory Hollywood happy ending," (131).

Spielberg, critics claim, have turned the Holocaust into a kind of macabre fairy tale. Yet it is equally as likely that Spielberg's expression and impression of Holocaust narratives, for certainly there are narratives as even Wiesel would agree, are "concerned with survival," a cornerstone of Holocaust discourse (Hansen 131). Just because Speilberg's medium and directorial style happens to be realism does not negate the expressionistic qualities that the film conveys, from the selection to the story itself (embedded in history) to the execution of the linear narrative.

The idea that the Holocaust belongs to, as White puts it, a "special class of events," is a compelling one (37). Any discursive historical representation has an "inexpungeable relativity," just as any historiography will (White 37). Narratives are certainly one of the many efforts to "lay claim to what and how a nation remembers," which is why it is important to place the object within its social, cultural, and historical context (Hansen127).

Added to the problem of representations is the equally as difficult problem of the "real" archival elements: the photos and film objects and the primary sources that are used to piece together historiographies and narratives alike. Wiesel has been quoted as saying that documentaries cannot do the Holocaust justice paradoxically because they show too much. In showing, it denigrates the experience, of "what can never be imagined," that domain of consciousness that only art, music, poetry, and other non-linear discursive creatures can attain (Weissman 142).

Thus, the documentary film Shoah autobiographical accounts such as Still Alive all stand in a direct challenge to.