In the present context it is especially interesting to consider the relationship between two central aspects of Ka-Tzetnik’s writing. The first has to do with the bizarre and startling mixture of kitsch, sadism, and what initially appears as outright pornography, with remarkable and at times quite devastating insights into the reality of Auschwitz, the fantasies it both engendered and was ruled by, and the human condition under the most extreme circumstances imaginable. While this melange often seems contradictory and baffling, as if written by two different personae (which, as we shall see, to some extent it was), it also constitutes the basis of the tremendous tension with which these volumes are charged and can be said to be the source of their occasionally uncontrolled energy and nihilistic impulse. The second aspect concerns the impact that Ka-Tzetnik’s work, and especially the earlier volumes of this sextet, has had on several generations of Israelis; the reasons for its appeal and ultimate adoption by the Israeli ministry of education (at a time when its popularity among the young was actually waning); and, conversely, its relative obscurity outside of Israel and the tendency of most writers on Holocaust literature to ignore it. In other words I propose to discuss some of the central motifs in Ka-Tzetnik’s writing, its reception by the public, and the extent to which it may inform us on the links between representing depravity and comprehending horror.
I should say at the outset that my own second encounter with Ka-Tzetnik, and this time with his complete works rather than the fragments I read in my youth, revealed that my memory—and, I suspect, that of other members of my generation—of what he was all about, indeed, my internalized understanding of his representation of the Holocaust, was largely false. And yet what I found just as troubling was that those elements of the work that had fascinated so many youths born in Israel between the late 1940s and early 1960s have retained that quality that makes it impossible to put down these volumes even as I now realize, and rebel against, what it is about them that makes them so gripping: namely, their obsession with violence and perversity. For Ka-Tzetnik is the kind of writer who under different circumstances would have appealed mainly to a juvenile readership; his prose is mediocre, and his ability to reconstruct human relations, to infiltrate the minds of his protagonists, and to enter the sphere of the emotions with any degree of subtlety is at best limited. Love, loyalty, tragedy, and even loss are all treated with dramatic brush strokes, often accompanied by bombastic exclamations; sexual relations between lovers are described in an almost embarrassingly adolescent manner. In short, parts of this sextet, when read in isolation from the rest, would have earned this writer a not particularly prominent place on the shelves of an average teenager’s library and would have been forgotten immediately after they were read. But these books treat the sphere not of the normal but of the depraved. And it is precisely because they are written by an author who lacks the gifts of a great writer (and who claims not to be a writer at all, but merely a chronicler) yet is determined to apply his limited literary abilities to an experience that lacks any precedent either in history or in representation, that the result is so striking, baffling, outrageous, and yet devastating. For how does one write a juvenile novel on the Holocaust? And how can this be done by a writer who himself seems never to have completely emerged from adolescence and yet has been through, and survived, all chambers of hell?
Being explicit about what one sees, feels, or does may emanate from an adolescent urge for honesty and sincerity, and an impatience with perceived or real (adult) subterfuge and deception, hypocrisy and cynicism. It can also be expressed or interpreted as pornography, providing the details of human anatomy or sexual activity generally considered too intimate or crass for public exposure, or lingering on instances of physical and mental abuse and torture, or any other form of inflicting bodily and psychological pain. Normally we would distinguish between sincere exposure of hidden truths and pornography by both the intentions of the representation and its potential effects on the public. Pornography would therefore be defined as a voyeuristic activity whereby the viewer is titillated by watching the (often perverse) sexual activities and pain of others. But it is clearly very difficult to determine how a given public will react to either form of representation; intentions and consequences do not always follow predictable paths. Thus, for instance, “thick descriptions” need to be explicit so as to be true to their goal of representing past or present reality as it “actually happened.” And while they would assert a high degree of truthfulness and honesty, they might also have the unintended result of attracting a public more interested in vicariously participating in breaking sexual taboos and committing atrocity than in any search for the causes and meanings of violence and murder.
From this perspective we might note that there are some not altogether obvious links between juvenile and popular (pulp) prose or cinematic fiction, on the one hand, and explicitly honest or explicitly pornographic representation, on the other. Sincerity is of course never merely about telling all the facts, and pornography is never merely an explicit portrayal of sex or violence. Self-perceived honesty may be based in error, and the most honestly reported facts can lie; conversely, representations of perversity and sadism can expose falsehood. But the urge of youth to be told the truth about facts of life that adults seem to be hiding from them, and their simultaneous curiosity about and fascination with matters of sex and violence, make them into a particularly receptive audience for representations of what could be called “explicit sincerity,” namely the conscious or unconscious manipulation of readers’ and viewers’ articulated or unspoken fears, urges, and obsessions.