When a Jew loves a Nazi: problems with repurposing the Holocaust for reparative romance

This chapter explores the rise of the Holocaust romance novel through the context of its cultural antecedents in Holocaust literature and popular culture. It provides an overview of Holocaust fiction and critical responses to this genre, before analysing the problems that are raised for scholars when the Holocaust is popularised and “Americanised”. It focuses on two case studies: Pam Jenoff’s The Kommandant’s Girl (2007), and Kate Breslin’s For Such A Time (2014). Both novels have been lauded by the romance industry but have also generated controversy over the stories they present of Jewish women who fall in love with SS officers during the Holocaust. The chapter argues that although Holocaust romance novels are generally well-researched and contain much information about Nazi policies, specific events in the Holocaust, and resistance movements, the Holocaust is nevertheless transformed into an exotic bourgeois romance which militates against understanding Holocaust history and the experiences and memories of victims and survivors. Because the romance is a fundamentally reparative genre, readers learn about the worst industrialised genocide of the twentieth century in a way that essentially comforts and soothes away the horrific and traumatic past.