Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Resistance is not futile
RON JACOBS welcomes the long overdue translation of an epic work that chronicles resistance to fascism during WWII
MURDER AFORETHOUGHT: The execution of 56 Poles in Bochnia, near Krakow on December 18 1939 [Found on a German officer/CC]

The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume III: A Novel
Peter Weiss, Duke University Press, £26.47

THE third volume of Peter Weiss’s masterwork The Aesthetics of Resistance opens with the narrator describing the murder of dozens of innocents by Nazi troops. In actuality, he is watching his mother lost in a hallucinatory vision brought on by the madness she and her husband have witnessed in their forced exile from their home in Bohemia. 

It is not until near the novel’s end that we discover that not only did she witness such executions — soldiers lining up civilians in front of a ditch then shooting them from behind so they fall face first into their mass grave — but that she fell into such a pit alive, wrestling with the dying humans to get out after the shooting ended. It was this moment that her mind broke and began to withdraw from the deranged reality of the Nazi frenzy of murder and annihilation. 

An execution by Nazi German forces of six Polish farmers during WWII in a village in the south-eastern Rzeszów voivodeship, 1943 - most likely suspected of aiding partizan resistance. Credit: Public domain
Abba Kovner (back row, center) with members of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (United Partisan Organization) in Vilna in July 1944. Credit: Author unknown/CC
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Daniel Lind-Ramos, Ensamblajes, Nottingham Contemporary
Exhibition review / 20 February 2025
20 February 2025
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement
RESILIENCE: (Right) Stand Up To Racism protest on October 26
Features / 31 December 2024
31 December 2024
The Morning Star sorts the good eggs from the rotten scoundrels of the year
Consuelo Kanaga. Young Girl in Profile, 1948.
Books / 3 October 2024
3 October 2024
JOHN GREEN marvels at the rediscovery of a radical US photographer who took the black civil rights movement to her heart
ARROGANCE AND IGNORANCE: Group of six European men sitting,
Book Review / 24 September 2024
24 September 2024
FRANCOISE VERGES introduces a powerful new book that explores the damage done by colonial theft