Essay on the Economy of Guilt. The Radical Evil in the Representation of Holocaust Perpetrators: the Example of Peter Schneider’s Vati

Abstract

This article discusses the question of guilt and penalty in the case of mass murderers as Josef Mengele. The abnormity of the crime, it seems, requires vengeance and not just a punishment restricted to the norms of human rights. In analogy to this assumption, fictional literature on this topic that does not satisfy the reader’s desire for revenge, cannot be considered felicitous. The thesis is apparently confirmed by the fate of Vati (1987), a narrative by Peter Schneider which describes the encounter between Mengele and his son in his hideout in Brazil. Concerning the facts based on a series of articles upon the real event, Schneider shows the psychological dilemma of the son who feels unable to deliver his guilty father to the authorities or punish him by his own hands; his failure to punish the perpetrator seems to be compensated by aggressive acts and fantasies against other persons. Schneider has tried to reduce the effect on his audiences, changing the narrator from the first to the third person. Nevertheless, the reception of his book shows that the author did not achieve the proportion between guilt and punishment that would have been expected by the public.