Stof en stilering van De ondergang van de Familie Boslowits.

The persecution of Jews in Amsterdam during the Occupation is the subject of Gerard Reve's classic novella The Decline and Fall of the Boslowits Family (1946, trans. By James S. Holmes & Hans van Marle 1961), which is narrated not from the victims' point of view but from that of their non-Jewish neighbours. Not only is no direct reference made to the threat facing the Boslowitses, but the story's narrative technique exploits the possibilities of this omission to the extreme: the words “Jew" or “Jewish" do not appear in the story at all. As a result, readers are offered a sense of the plight of the Jewish communities in Amsterdam in a way that provides access to unspoken subtleties lying hidden beneath the surface. Using Louis de Jong's multi-volume study of The Kingdom of the Netherlands during World War II as a guide, the present essay explores the various ways in which the story invokes and exploits references to historical events. A surprisingly detailed chronology can be established for a story in which not a single date is mentioned. An appreciation of the significance of historical context in this story suggests more generally that our understanding of Dutch literary works dealing with World War II can benefit greatly from a closer attention to historical details, and from a more historically informed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]