As you begin the first book of Charlotte Delbo's Auschwitz and After, work through the following questions that we will discuss during class on Thursday:
1. How is your reading experience different while reading Charlotte Delbo's Auschwitz and After from that you experienced while reading Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz or Sara Nomberg-Przytyk's Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land? What narrative strategies does she use?
2. How is the book set up? How might you characterize her narrative strategy as a whole?
3. In the epigraph to the book, Delbo notes that "Today, I am not sure that what I wrote is true. I am certain it is truthful." How does this impact your reading of the text (or does it impact your reading at all)? Why would she choose to include such an inscription? How does her admission of truth compare to other admissions of truth we have discussed, whether in film or text?
4. There are a number of extremely graphic, visceral scenes in None of Us Will Return. Which scene sticks out in your memory, and why?
5. Camp life in None of Us Will Return, the first book of Auschwitz and After, is both different from and similar to the camp life Levi outlines in Survival in Auschwitz. How specifically is her account similar to/different from the previous texts we have read?
6. Brett Ashley Kaplan has described the reader's response to Delbo's work as one that registers "unwanted beauty." What do you suppose she means, and where do you see evidence of such a response in your reading of the text?
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