Att vittna om sin tid. Framställningar av antisemitism och förföljdas erfarenheter i svensk 1940-talsprosa

Abstract

In this article three novels by Margareta Suber (Vänd ditt ansikte till mig, 1942), Marika Stiernstedt (Banketten, 1947) and Gurli Hertzman-Ericson (Hjälteglorian, 1950) are discussed as testimonies of their time, the politically and ideologically charged 1940s. The authors are portraying the lives of those most affected by war, also in a Swedish setting: Jewish refugees and the Jewish population in Sweden, all exposed to anti-Semitism. Suber, Stiernstedt and Hertzman-Ericson also picture experiences from the persecution of the German Nazis, the first representations of the Holocaust written in Swedish fiction. The article analyses the different modes of narration used in order to formulate these traumatic experiences, for example the pseudodocumentary text and the traumatic memory that is forever repeated. In this discussion research on Holocaust fiction is used, for example Ernst van Alphen (1997) and Susan R. Horowitz (1997).