The power of memory and the heritage of the World War Two in When You Return by Anna Mitgutsch

Abstract

The article is devoted to the image of World War Two in When You Return (Wenn du wiederkommst) (2010) by Anna Mitgutsch, a moving story of love, trust and betrayal, devoted to the protagonist’s response to the sudden death of her Jewish-American ex-husband Jerome. The article discusses the attitude to Jewish roots and the problem of remembering past events, especially memories of World War Two. In her novel the author combines family history with the history of the country, refers to the issue of cultural and collective memory, and especially to the specific Austrian memory of the events of the Holocaust and the long-standing tendency to diminish the guilt and to negate the participation of Austrians in war crimes.