Hans Günter Adler's 'Un Voyage': A Haunting Holocaust Narrative

Hans Günter Adler, born July 2, 1910, in Prague, studied literature, science, and music before working for Czech radio. Deported in 1942 to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz (where his wife and mother were killed), and later Buchenwald, he lost sixteen family members in the camps. Liberated by Americans, he worked at the Jewish Museum in Prague before settling in London, where he wrote 'Un Voyage' in 1950-51. The novel was published only in 1962 in Germany. The book disorients readers from the start: no dates, no precise era, characters ordered to leave their homes without explanation. They refer to deportation as a poorly organized, uncomfortable 'journey.' The narrative blurs reality and fiction, with characters hallucinating, seeing specters, and losing all bearings. Doctors are forbidden to practice, innkeepers lose their livelihoods—all by an anonymous, diffuse authority. The past becomes fiction, names replaced by numbers. Nazism, unnamed, is described as a 'first epidemic mental illness.' The text mixes philosophical reflections, dialogue, and interior monologue reminiscent of Joyce. Objects become enchanted ('the locomotive pants with joy'). Elias Canetti praised the book as 'beyond anger and bitterness.' Adler's aim was not documentary testimony but to convey the concentration camp experience through a rich, lyrical language that forces readers to confront uncomfortable questions.