From the Holocaust to the refugee crisis. Anti-semitism and Islamophobia in Vladimir Vertlib's Viktor hilft
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17398/2660-7301.47.123Keywords:
antisemitism, Vertlib, refugee crisis, multidirectional memoryAbstract
In many of his novels, the Austrian writer of Russian-Jewish origin Vladimir Vertlib explores both the anti-Semitic past in Central Europe and the experiences of violence and discrimination that Eastern European Jews went through in the 20th century. In his novel Viktor hilft (2018), Vertlib also links the experience of the Jewish diaspora to the so-called European refugee crisis, which intensified from 2015. This work analyzes how the suffering of persecution and discrimination of different groups of victims are linked in the novel. Firstly, the analysis focuses on the protagonist’s memory process, which integrates the experiences of refugees from Muslim countries when processing his childhood memories. Secondly, the mechanisms of the text are studied to problematize how the Holocaust and the current refugee crisis are linked in public discourses.
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