Humanizing the Nazi?: The Semiotics of Vampirism, Trauma, and Post-Holocaust Ethics in Louise Murphy's The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival

In reconfiguring the Otherness and radical evil of the Nazi Other in her post-Holocaust retelling, Louise Murphy appropriates a system of vampiric codes and signs, the semiotics of vampirism, to accomplish two goals: First, to underwrite the Oberführer's obsession with revitalizing his body and the fascist body politic. Second, to reveal the projective displacement inherent to the demonization of the Jews in the anti-Semitic Nazi racial ideology.