Fatelessness�Chapter 7

By Stefan Search

Imre Kertész

• Born in Budapest (Hungry) on November 9, 1929.
• In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945.
• Kertész and his wife currently live in Berlin, Germany.
• Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002

The Story of Fatelessness

• About a Hungarian Jew (György) who is sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, and later on to Buchenwald.
• He is about 14-15 when he is sent to the camp which the same age that Imre would have been.
• In chapter 7 he is in his second camp, Buchenwald, and goes to the hospital due to an infected wound that means he can barely walk.

Autobiographical novel

• According to many sites on the internet the book is in the genre of an autobiographical novel which seems obvious from the similarities between the character and the author.

• “Kertész's first novel, Sorstalanság (Eng. Fateless, 1992; see WLT 67:4, p. 863), a work based on his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was published in 1975. "When I am thinking about a new novel, I always think of Auschwitz," he has said. This does not mean, however, that Sorstalanság is autobiographical in any simple sense: Kertész says himself that he has used the form of the autobiographical novel but that it is not autobiography.”

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"Imre Kertész - Biography" Nobelprize.org 30 Mar 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2002/kertesz-bio.html

• As we can see from the quote the book takes parts of his life but is not an autobiography and many of his other books are the same. He takes parts of his life before and after World War II and changes them slightly.

Context Of The Book

• The book is set in the second world war in Hungry and Germany.
• There are many laws and social “rules” in place that discriminate against certain classes of the society.
• The Nazis imposed their ideology upon everyone they could.

Cultural issues in the book

• Discrimination
• Segregation
• Mistreatment of other Humans.

• In chapter 7 we only really see one of these that is the mistreatment of other humans namely the segregated and persecuted social that the Nazi wanted to rid from the face of the earth.
• A the end of the chapter we are told about the killings in this camp. (pg. 186 “Beyond that were...”)
• We see the feeling of the guards towards the prisoners. (pg. 174 “En route a soldier...”)

• On the internet I found an interesting article to do with the holocaust. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/33298

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• See line “Surprisingly, one of the best accounts...”

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• From this we can see that some of the German soldier did not agree completely with what was happening (Bystanders) and may have not had the same thoughts as the one in the truck.

Conclusion

• The book is based on the life of the author although is not an autobiography.
• The cultural issues seen in chapter 7 are the consequence of ones from earlier in the book (Segregation/Discrimination)

Thank you for watching.