You're on your own with Crampton. It's a lot of reading this week, so skim cleverly to pick up the main arguments, if you don't have time to read carefully. The following questions should help you.

The Škvorecky and Borowski pieces

1. The Škvoresky and Borowski pieces react to horror differently. What psychological mechanisms do you see in the narrators? Do you think their Czech and Polish settings tend to make the one write about a visiting band and the other life in a concentration camp? Use Radice to work out the different experiences of the two populations during the war.

2. What is the relationship between normalcy and war or normalcy and horror in both literary pieces? How are they similar and how do they differ? What does this say about the difficulty/ease post-war Europeans had with coming to terms with the German occupation?

3. In the "Bass saxophone", which conflicts seem to be a continuation of the 1920s-30s Czech-Sudeten German problems and which seem to have been imported by the occupation?

4. What might music symbolize in the "Bass saxophone" and who are the narrator's enemies in trying to hear and play his music?

5. Comparing "Auschwitz, Our Home" and "The White Plague", what attitudes are being developed among intellectuals regarding science, medicine in particular, and the humanistic traditions of Central Europe? (check out pp. 104-105, 137)

6. What nationality/ethnicity was the narrator of "Auschwitz, Our Home"? What effect do you think it had on his portrayal of Auschwitz? What do you make of the last page?

7. All of the literary pieces we have read so far, and many that we will read in the coming weeks, rely on satire and irony. Why do you think that is?

Radice:

1. What were the tensions between the Nazi attempt to integrate the European economy (Grossraumwirtschaft) and resettlement program?

2. Where were the biggest relocations of Germans (Volksdeutsche) and non-Germans?

3. How did Nazis work with and/or take over the economies of Eastern Europe? Who suffered the most/least?

4. Looking at the table on page 11 of  "European Development under German hegemony", what do you think accounts for the decrease or increase of grain exports to Germany from the various regions?

5. Why did the Germans increase investments in East European industry after 1941?

6. Which countries suffered the most devastation in the last year of the war? What were the territorial and population gains and losses at the close of the war?

7. Where was there significant land reform after the war, who were the winners and losers?