McGlothlin, Erin. Teaching the Perpetrator’s Perspective in Holocaust Literature.

This chapter proposes pedagogical strategies for teaching literary representations that feature the perspective of Holocaust perpetrators.

Erin McGlothlin discusses the challenges and advantages of integrating texts that focus on the perspective and experience of Holocaust perpetrators into university-level courses on Holocaust literature (both introductory undergraduate courses and graduate-level courses). First, she argues that such a focus on the perpetrator is critical not only for students’ comprehension of the complex historical relationship between various participant groups and subject positions in the Holocaust, but also for their understanding of the textual dynamics of literary representations of the Holocaust, particularly the deployment of reader empathy, identification and perspective-taking. Second, she discusses the potential pitfalls that can result from reading literary texts that foreground the perpetrator’s perspective, such as the common initial response among students (especially younger students) to reflexively perceive the perpetrator as primarily a victim of circumstances, a victimhood that they tend to conflate with the experiences of Jewish and non-Jewish victims and survivors. Third, she introduces a strategy for negotiating these challenges, which involves balancing the testimony of real-life perpetrators with that of victims and survivors who are present at a particular point in space at roughly the same moment and with fictional texts that offer alternative viewpoints on the same set of events.

Erin McGlothlin,“Teaching the Perpetrator’s Perspective in Holocaust Literature.” The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies.  Ed. Susanne Knittel and Zachary Goldberg.  London: Routledge, 2019: 364-368.