Transcript

by Heimrad Bäcker, Patrick Greaney (Translator), Vincent Kling (Translator)

"transcript" is a disturbing document. Using the techniques of concrete and visual poetry, Heimrad B?cker presents quotations from the Holocaust's planners, perpetrators, and victims. The book offers a startling collection of documents that confront us with details from the bureaucratic world of the Nazis and the intimate worlds they destroyed. B?cker's sources range from victims' letters and medical charts to train schedules and the telephone records of Auschwitz. His transcriptions and reworkings of these sources serve as a reminder that everything about the Shoah was spoken about in great detail, from the most banal to the most monstrous. "transcript" shows us that the Holocaust was not "unspeakable," but was an eminently describable and described act spoken about by thousands of people concerned with the precision and even the beauty of their language.

Genres: Poetry, German Literature

153 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Otto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Erschütternd, was Bäcker hier durch Zitate aus der NS-Zeit über die Unmenschlichkeiten darstellt. Gemeinheiten, Grausamkeiten, und alles unter dem Mantel der bürokratisch-juristischen Kälte und pseudowissenschaftlicher Forschung, bei der Menschen Versuchsobjekte werden.
Alles Fakten, die bekannt sind, aber durch Bäckers kommentarlose Aneinanderreihung, bewusste Zusammenstellung unter die Haut gehen