Transgenerational Trauma and the Figure of the Perpetrator: Holocaust Fiction in “Micha” by Rachel Seiffert.

This essay aims to study the figure of the perpetrator and how trauma can be transmitted through several generations in the long short story “Micha” by Rachel Seiffert. This is the third and last story in a volume entitled The Dark Room (2001), which deals with three different generations that are connected indirectly to Germans who participated in the genocide. In “Micha”, entitled after its protagonist’s name, we observe the third generation: Micha is the grandchild of Askan Boell, a Waffen-SS member. Through the long short story, Micha will try to discover his grandfather’s dark past. I will first contextualize the story within Holocaust fiction and Trauma literature before I focus on the transgenerational transmission of trauma and the perpetrator.