Hunger is an Object: The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller (EN)
A review in English
A novel written based on a true
story of Oskar Pastior, a poet who lived just long enough to give Herta Muller
the background of the novel. This novel is consisted of 64 chapters which tells
a story of a German who was deported to a concentration camp in Soviet Union
(now Russia). As one of the novels which takes place in the middle of
German-Soviet War, the Hunger Angel is documenting the inhumanity in exploiting
the Germans in a forced-labor as the payback for damages caused by the war.
There are a bunch of novels with similar background such as Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz, Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn and Night by Wiesel, but the way Herta
Muller carries on the story in The Hunger Angel and plays with readers’ emotion
is one of a kind.
Leo Auberg, an ethnic German
living in Romania, was picked up by the patrols from his home to be transported
to the concentration camp located in Russia. Leo was deported in winter 1945,
just after the war had ended. Prior to the deportation of Germans living in
Europe to the concentration camps scattered all over Russia, in 1944 Red Army
had advanced deep inside Romania; the Fascist dictatorship was overthrown and
its leader, Ion Antonescu, was arrested and later executed. In September 1944,
Romania signed an armistice, surrendered to Russia and out of the blue declared
war to its former ally, Nazi Germany. However, while the war ended with German
was on defeat, Stalin ordered the Red Army to deport the Germans at the ages of
17 – 45, both the men and the women, to the concentration camps in Russia as
the force-laborer. When he was climbed the truck in front of his home, Leo
Auberg only carried a suitcase made from a gramophone box containing a couple
of coats, pants, gaiters, gloves, a silk scarf and toilet kit.
“All that I have I carry on me. Or: All that is mine I carry with me. I carried all I had, but it wasn’t mine. Everything either came from someone else or wasn’t what it was supposed to be” On Packing Suitcases, pg. 1
These handful of things that he
carried to the camp were so precious for him; these things would determine his
survival in the years ahead. All the things he carried represented the memories
from his previous life before being deported and were the hope that he kept clinging
to. Leo was picked up at his home by the patrols in the dusk and all he heard
was the sentence from his grandmother who was standing in front of the door,
“I know you’ll come back”
Leo met the other Germans who
came from different regions across the Europe on a train from Romania to
Russia. Being called as A Motley Crew, they
came from different places to be gathered in a concentration camp, some of the
character are Trudi Pelikan, Artur Prikulitsch and Beatrice Zakel who had known
each other since they were children, Oswald Enyeter, Konrad Fonn, Karli Halmen,
Albert Gion and many others. None of them had ever been in a war, had ever
known the feeling of being on the front line and had ever understood anything
that happened during war (the diplomacy, the accords, etc), but they were
there, cramped in the barracks, just because they were Germans. And that the
Germans were guilty of the destruction and the damages in Russia during the
war. And they were there as forced-laborer, paying back what German had done in
Russia.
“None of us were part of any war, but because we were Germans, the Russians considered us guilty of Hitler’s crimes” A Mortley Crew, pg. 36.
In the concentration camp, Leo
worked for a piece of bread and a pinch of salt; he shoveled sand and cement,
transported the materials from the camp to other places, and worked on slag
cellar. Leo and the others dealt with diseases and violent winters. And for 5
years, he counted the days and the seasons he’d be out from the camp and on his
way home, the place where he could have his tummy full again. There were
friends who came and gone during his stay in the camp, either they were just
dead or missing during their duty. Or there were times where he laid back with
his tummy empty, imagining his life to be the normal one; with enough food,
with family and a spouse (probably). All the chapters are composed by brilliant
poetic ruminations and transformations of this young man as he deals with the
slag and coal he digs and heaves from dawn to dusk every day.
As for hunger angels, the novel
describes the being as a contrived and somewhat overindulged spirit that broods
over Leo’s life, interrupts its few pleasures and remains to damn him. However
at the same time, the spirit is the driven-factor for Leo to keep his life
going in the camp. The end of the story is relieving and frustrating at the
same time. Living as a forced-laborer is a taboo that couldn’t be spoken of at
that time.
The grim and poetic description of Leo’s life that stretch
along the novel and Leo’s imagination of coming home are the interesting parts of the story. Herta
Muller is succeed in bringing the experiences in the concentration camp through Leo’s
feeling and eyes to the readers. I’d like to recommend this book for readers
who love classic, historical and documentary books.
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