Paying Homage to the Holocaust Female Victims in The Zone of Interest

Abstract

Martin Amis returns to the subject of the Holocaust after Time’s Arrow (1991) with The Zone of Interest, a realistic novel set in Auschwitz in the months from August 1942 to April 1943. Amis decides to deal again with the atrocities committed by the Nazis, because he believes that the impact of the Holocaust will change with the physical disappearance of the survivors. In this article we are going to focus on two of the female victims created by Amis: a Jewish prisoner who confronts her oppressors and a Jewish doctor morally destroyed by her collaboration with the Nazis, both of whom are presented through the perpetrator’s gaze. In order to demonstrate how Amis succeeds in giving the reader a truthful picture of the humiliations the Nazis inflicted on their victims, we will use the witnesses’ testimonies and the studies on the Holocaust relevant to our analysis, with special attention to those who offer a gender perspective.